MaryAnn’s quick take… If Jane Austen wrote a horror movie. An almost serene sinisterness infuses female-gazey carnal intrigue… but it could be even more feminist than it is. I’m “biast” (pro): I’m desperate for stories about women; love the cast

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

So who is — or are — the beguiled of The Beguiled? Is it the badly wounded Union soldier taken in by the girls and women of a Virginia seminary school in 1864 while the Civil War rages nearby? Does he feel the need to enchant his captor-nurses so thoroughly that they wouldn’t dream of turning him over to the Confederate army as a prisoner of war? (He does indeed attempt this.) Or is it those few students and teachers remaining at the otherwise abandoned school, so secluded, so bereft of charming male companionship?...