Review of Nomadland (2021) by Taplinger — 18 Apr 2021

An hour and forty five minutes of Frances McDormand trying valiantly to keep her lips around what we can only guess are the biggest teeth in Hollywood. In the process she has 2 expressions: quiet and sad, and quiet and grimacing. This, of course, gets old rather quickly.

Then we have the dramatic technique of having real people (non-actors) stepping into the script. This makes for 2 possibilities: the director gives them 1 line to memorize and they recite it in a monotone, or they tell their sad story to the camera. The latter is fine and would be much better in a documentary.