THR Puts Two Campion Films on Best of Century List

“Over the course of a few months, several Zoom meetings, and countless emails, six Hollywood Reporter (THR) film critics came together to hash out, and rank, what they consider the 50 greatest films since 2000,” including two of New Zealand director Jane Campion’s: Bright Star and The Power of the Dog.

Campion’s 2009 film Bright Star is “the story of an unconsummated love affair in the final years of John Keats’ short life. Catnip for English majors? No question. But Campion’s fine balance between the sumptuous and the trenchant will seduce even the sonnet-averse,” THR writes.

“It seems less a departure than an expansion that Campion, a director who came to prominence with needling examinations of the female psyche, returned to features after a 12-year absence with this brilliantly uncomfortable chamber piece about corrosive masculinity fed by sexual repression … whose epic scope is echoed in its majestic landscapes.”

Original article by Jon Frosch, David Rooney, Sheri Linden, Lovia Gyarkye, Leslie Felperin and Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter, April 6, 2023.