Empire of Light

Positives first: the cinematography is quite beautiful and enjoyable, as is the scoring. The performances are great and holding the movie together - the cast does a great job.

At the same time I struggled with figuring out what this film was trying to be about.

A woman in her midlife crisis? Mental health? Racism? A movie theater gradually falling from glory (or finding its way back)? Unusual relationships? Abuse? (At one point there is a conversation that caught me off guard) And then there are some additional nuggets casually thrown in for a moment, but without any weight or meaning.

All these themes have great potential to start important conversations, but you have to commit to one and explore it fully - instead, this movie touches on all of them and dances around them, throws in a bunch of sex scenes (some of which being rather unnecessary).

That being said, watching the cast was still quite enjoyable, so i still had a reasonably good time.