DUTCH TRIP
"Here here the best part because you get to make up a story and control everything". Gee, if only that worked in the cinematic world consistently, like when Rob Reiner got behind the lens and told Kathy Bates to let er rip.
Anyway 2025's Holland is a stoner fever dream, the type of movie that relies on visual symbolism and grisly palate as opposed to actually delivering a story that is not cut and dried. A dorky husband who is suspected of being unfaithful to his wife is actually a serial killer. And said wife jots around stakeout-style while acting a little cuckoo bird herself. What, we're supposed to think this is out of the box stuff just because Holland's hook is that it takes place in a small burgh via the state of Michigan? Get reals.
So OK, Holland stars Nicole Kidman, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Matthew Macfadyen, actors who give raw, disciplined performances despite the final, work-shy result. Lots of match cuts here, a hallucinatory image there, dazed nightmare sequences everywhere, some cognitive freak-outs. Holland isn't an awful flick but it's certainly an off-center one, looking like TV swipe from the 70s, taking place in the early 2000s, and feeling like 1950s suburbanite, h-e double hockey sticks. "It may seem like we have everything all together but right under the surface it's like we're being strangled." You don't say Australia's favorite Oscar victor. You don't say.
I'd say (pun intended) that Holland is a director's pic if there ever was one, with helmer Mimi Cave committing to every shot even if her diegesis is about as stale as every 90s satire a la Kathleen Turner or some black comedy from decades ago starring Roseanne Barr. I mean do you want nuclear family noir or Stepford Wives avant-garde. I myself can't decide. "Great lakes okay times."
Written by Jesse Burleson