Mark Kermode on… Kathryn Bigelow, a stylish ruffler of feathers

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From vampire noir to Bin Laden, Point Break to Detroit, the first woman to win an Oscar for best director has never pulled her punches Watching new Jeff Nichols release The Bikeriders , starring Austin Butler and Tom Hardy as 60s Chicago greasers, I was reminded of two other movies: László Benedek’s 1953 Marlon Brando vehicle The Wild One , explicitly cited as an inspiration, and The Loveless , the 1981 feature debut of Kathryn Bigelow , the American film-maker (b.1951) who would go on to become the first woman to win a best director Oscar with her 2008 war drama The Hurt Locker . A symphony of leather-clad posing (with just a touch of Kenneth Anger ), The Loveless was a staple of the late-night circuit in the 80s, often on a double bill with David Lynch’s Eraserhead . Sharing directing credits with Monty Montgomery, Bigelow playfully deconstructed masculinity and machismo in a manner that was one part wry to two parts relish. I remember seeing The Loveless at the Phoenix in East
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Cat Person review – viral short story becomes violent big screen thriller

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Sundance film festival: Kristen Roupenian’s nuanced internet-breaking story of modern dating is uneasily turned into a more literal horror

As utterly inescapable as Kristen Roupenian’s viral, pop culture-piercing New Yorker short story Cat Person was in 2017, it didn’t seem like an obvious fit for any form of adaptation – a button-pushing speed-read that was as popular as it was self-contained. It told the story of a 20-year-old female student who briefly dates a schlubby, unreadable guy in his mid-30s (who may or may not have cats) in a way that many found instantly, uncomfortably, relatable. It was messy and uneasy and ultimately rather chilling as briefly dating someone can often be.

Its success was such that more was sought, insisted upon even. Its author got a book deal (a collection of short stories that landed with a bit of a thud) and sold a spec script (for Gen Z whodunnit Bodies Bodies Bodies, which was ultimately almost entirely rewritten). Cat Person was bought for extension as a movie, regardless of fit. Almost six years after it appeared online, it’s arriving at Sundance as something of a curio, a reminder of an online moment more than anything else. The question of “Remember Cat Person?” is almost immediately replaced with “How did they turn Cat Person into a movie?” which then warps into “Why did they turn Cat Person into a thriller?”

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