The Royal Hotel

Competently made, but its discussion of gender politics feels disingenuous and unbalanced. The movie tries to get away with how it depicts male behavior by setting the movie in the Australian outback, but the major leaps it asks for still ring to me as false. There’s nothing wrong with the dialogue or acting, it’s entirely the fault of the direction and story. For what it’s trying to do, all of the characters are simply too one dimensional. That could work if you throw in a layer of artifice, like _Barbie_ for example; however it stretches believability with this more realistic, grounded tone. As a result, a lot of of the (implied) tension didn’t really resonate with me either once it decides to go full thriller mode. Again, it’s not a terrible film, but it reeks of the wrong kind of feminism. 4.5/10

It's very well done, but I wish the story had more of an arc instead of just kinda... ending.