THE COLUMNIST MOVIE REVIEW
Director: Ivo van Aart
Writer: Daan Windhorst
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC,
Opens: May 7, 2021
This Dutch treat has a special resonance for me. A film reviewer who is a member of my critics’ group has been known to be a contrarian. He delivers his opinions and does not try to be different from others, but often he just is. As a result he had caused movies on Rotten Tomatoes to be 99% fresh or, in converse, to cause movies that are 99% rotten to be fresh. All this occurred during the years that Rotten Tomatoes allowed people to comment on the reviews, a nice, democratic policy, but young people (mainly) being young people, scores of folks probably in high school resented his “ruining” a picture by depriving it of the rare 100% accolades. They tormented him on the computer with comments that got nastier by the week and went overboard. Some began calling him at his home at all hours. I don’t know how he resolved this dilemma, but Rotten
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The Columnist (Cert 15, 84 mins)
Available from March 15 on Amazon Prime Video/BT TV Store/iTunes/Sky Store/TalkTalk TV Store and other download and streaming services)
The Columnist: Katja Herbers as Femke Boot. Picture: PA Photo/Vertigo Releasing.
Femke Boot (Katja Herbers) is a mild-mannered Dutch newspaper columnist, who draws on personal experience for her work.
One opinion piece about a neighbour, who blithely flouts political correctness by performing in blackface, elicits a torrent of abuse on social media channels.
Last modified on Thu 11 Mar 2021 10.45 EST
To paraphrase Nietzsche: gaze too long into Twitter, and Twitter will gaze into you. Anyone who writes for a living on the internet has surely fantasised about payback time for all the keyboard warriors, callous below-the-liners and unrepentant trolls out there. Ivo van Aartâs movie gives full rein to that desire and is snappily directed â but in the end there is something self-satisfied and sententious about his feminist revenge flick.
Katja Herbers plays Femke Boot, a newspaper columnist drowning in internet misogyny, especially after she steps out of her usual lifestyle remit to write an op-ed about Zwarte Piet, the Dutch blackface folkloric character. Her book publisher is pressurising her for juicier material to better compete with author-of-the-hour Steven Dood (Steven Death), a kohl-rimmed provocateur who savages her on a chatshow. Umbilically fed by her phone on a diet of shitposter abuse, she finally snaps when she reali