🍿49: Don't Worry Darling

This week: Nudes in Disney and a feature review of the year's most controversial blockbuster! Pugh Pugh 🔫

Oct 6, 2022

“If a problem can be solved there is no use worrying about it. If it can't be solved, worrying will do no good.”
~ Seven Years in Tibet, 1997

Give ‘em a round of applause…

If you missed the last issue of Salty Popcorn, then you may not have heard that we were given the honour of selecting the week’s film clips for the Please Consume newsletter.

The bad news is that if you didn’t sign up then you missed out on the best five scenes from films to have featured in SP over the past two years. The good news is we’re feeling generous and thought we’d include them in this week’s intro.

Just click the link to watch the scene:

Remember, you can get still get great film clips directly to your inbox by subscribing to Please Consume.

Now for the headlines:

Lily-Rose Depp and Bill Skarsgård are set to star in Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, with Skarsgård set to play the iconic vampire. Read more.
Sacheen Littlefeather, the actress and Indigenous activist that turned down an Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando, has passed away. Read more.
Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, is set to make a film adaptation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Read more.

Salty Popcorn is 100% free, but if you enjoy SP, please consider buying us a cinema ticket for just £5 per month - or a bunch of tickets for just £30 per year. Thank you!

Upcoming Releases

Emancipation

UK: 2 December // USA: 2 December

Based on a true story and directed by Antoine Fuqua, Emancipation stars Will Smith as Peter, a slave who escapes from a Louisiana plantation in search of freedom after being whipped within an inch of his life.

With the surprise announcement of this film’s release, it looks like Smith will be a contender for Best Actor at next year’s Oscars. It could be the first time an actor has been banned from the ceremony while simultaneously being nominated for an award.

The Wonder

UK: 16 November // USA: 16 November

Starring Florence Pugh and based on the book by Emma Donoghue, writer of ‘Room’. The Wonder is the tale of a young Irish girl, Anna O'Donnell, whose Catholic family claim she has eaten nothing since her eleventh birthday, four months ago.

Stars at Noon

UK: TBC // USA: 14 October

An American journalist (Margaret Qualley) stranded in present-day Nicaragua seduces an enigmatic Englishman (Joe Alwyn) who seems like her best chance of escape. But she soon realises that their affair has only put her in more danger.

Fact of the week

The 1977 animated film, The Rescuers, is a children’s classic but did you know that Disney had to recall 3.4 million copies of the home video in 1999… why? Because it contained an “objectionable background image”.

As the film’s heroes, Bianca and Bernard, fly through New York City strapped into a sardine box on the back of an albatross, there are two single frames where the photo of a topless woman can be seen in one of the windows.

Was it the work of a prankster or a disgruntled employee? Nobody knows, but it’s there. Here’s the clip, but watch closely because if you blink you’ll miss it.

Review: Don’t Worry Darling

Star rating:

2 (out of 5)

Where to watch:

USA: Only in cinemas

UK: Only in cinemas

Runtime:

2hr 03m

Director:

Olivia Wilde

Blurb:

In the 1950s utopian complex of Victory, the women cook, shop and drink in a luxury paradise while their husbands work on a top-secret project. But, as Alice (Florence Pugh) soon discovers, not everything is as it seems.

The review (NO spoilers):

Don’t Worry Darling has an interesting premise but fails to explore the concept in any meaningful depth. Instead, too much time is given to setting the scene and painting the apparently perfect world of Victory, where everyone is either happy or drunk.

While we know something more sinister is happening in the background, that fact is left dangling in front of us for too long. The longer we were left waiting for that something to happen or be revealed, the more my interest waned.

Harry Styles is about as good an actor as you’d expect and no number of sleek suits or classic cars can distract from it. While Pugh does well to carry him (and the film for that matter) with her performance, I should have been less surprised that a production that focuses so much on 1950s glamour and debauchery would put style — and Styles — over substance.

It’s a difficult film to write about without spoiling anything, but there are numerous holes in the plot, there’s barely an ounce of the suspense that the trailer hints at and it’s not half as feminist as Olivia Wilde wants it to be.

For further reading, I enjoyed Adrian Horton’s review/essay in The Guardian. She reveals a lot of spoilers, but I couldn’t agree with her more on this film.

Scroll down to see what’s in the next issue.

If you liked Don’t Worry Darling…

Get Out

2017 | UK: Amazon Prime (£2.49) // USA: YouTube ($3.99)

If you were in a coma in 2017 and still haven’t seen Get Out, now’s the time. There’s a reason Jordan Peele’s status as a filmmaker has been elevated in recent years, it’s this.

While it may not seem like there are any clear comparisons to draw between these two films, Peele’s directorial debut shares a lot of common themes with Don’t Worry Darling, but I won’t spoil either of them by telling you what they are.