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One of Ted Bundy ‘s surviving victims has shared her thoughts about Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile , Zac Efron as the serial murderer.
Kathy Kleiner Rubin is one of the two survivors of the attack conducted by Bundy in 1978 at the Florida State University Chi Omega sorority house.
That night, Bundy murdered sorority sisters Margaret Elizabeth Bowman and Lisa Levy, and attacked Karen Chandler as well as Kleiner.
Kleiner told TMZ Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile – the trailer of which came out on Friday – “as long as they understand that what they’re watching wasn’t a normal person”.
She believes it’s important to show Bundy exactly in the light he was perceived at the time of his crimes.
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The 15 best films of 2018 14. Game Night “We knew there was a bad version of this movie that could exist,” said Game Night ’s co-director John Francis Daley (the kid from Freaks and Geeks ). This certainly isn’t it. Starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams as a competitive married couple who mistake an actual kidnapping for a particularly immersive role play game, Game Night is snappy, witty and fully committed to its brilliant, tonally unsettling conceit.
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BBC/IWM
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Picturehouse Entertainment
The 15 best films of 2018 10. Black Panther There were two Marvel films released this year, one of which – Avengers Infinity War – was an over-crowded, if ambitious, sequel. The other was a landmark film – not just for Marvel, but for cinema. Black Panther was fit to bursting with selling points, all combining to deliver the studio’s best film: Michael B Jordan’s standout villain, scene-stealing performances from Danai Guria and Letitia Wright, plus the direction of Creed ’s Ryan Coogler who proved an inspired appointment. Wakanda forever, indeed.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
The 15 best films of 2018 9. Cold War Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War , shot in the sleekest black and white, is an effortlessly stylish and romantic drama set in a period of political convulsion. It offers everything from Polish folk music to the sultriest Birth of the Cool-style jazz. Pawlikowski includes moments of reckless hedonism alongside scenes of exile and imprisonment. Best of all, the film has a truly wonderful performance from Joanna Kulig as Zula, the free-spirited young folk singer turned femme fatale.
Kino Świat
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Sony Pictures Classics
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Twentieth Century Fox
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Amazon Studio
The 15 best films of 2018 2. Phantom Thread Should Phantom Thread really be Daniel Day-Lewis’s final film, then the actor can retire knowing that Reynolds Woodcock ranks among his greatest roles. Day-Lewis plays the egomaniacal fashion designer with a childish whimsy, but there's also a spectral quality to him that looms in every scene. Lesley Manville’s deliciously funny Cyril and Vicky Krieps’s superbly sharp Alma offer two cunning counters to Reynolds’s growing appetite for self-destruction, making for some wonderfully heated confrontations. Paul Thomas Anderson’s direction allows each character to blossom on screen, in a film that makes for a masterful study of poisonous relationships.
REX
The 15 best films of 2018 1. Roma Loosely based on his own childhood, Alfonso Cuaron's follow-up to the Oscar-winning Gravity is a gorgeous piece of film-making, a quiet paean to the women who raised him. It's a neorealist masterpiece, shot in 65mm black and white, and built from detailed vignettes of domestic life in early 1970s Mexico City, a time there of great social unrest. Savour every scene: the camera takes it all in, as we follow a young Mixtec woman named Cleo (wonderful newcomer Yalitza Aparicio) who looks after a well-to-do family she comes to think of as her own. It's about love, grief and resilience: it will slay you.
Netflix
“I think the movie does glorify him more than I think he should be but I think everyone should see it and understand him as what he was even when he was the perfect son,” Kleiner added.
She hopes the film will prompt women to be “cautious” and listen to their guts if “something doesn’t feel right” about someone.
Kleiner told Rolling Stone
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile premiered on Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival, shortly after the release of the four-part Netflix documentary Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy tapes .
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Try for free Critics so far have praised Efron’s performance while remaining divided about the movie’s portrayal of Bundy.
Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The AV Club ' s AA Dowd wrote: “[Director Joe] Berlinger may think he’s taking the non-sensationalised approach by refusing to depict Bundy’s shocking murders. But by only showing us his public face, the tap-dancing charm that made him a media sensation (augmented here by yet another loaded jukebox of sub-Scorsese needle drops), Extremely Wicked risks minimizing his evil.”
It has been 30 years since Bundy was executed at the age of 42. At the time of his death, he had confessed to killing 30 women and girls across seven states, though the actual death toll might be higher.
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