AFTER THE WEDDING (no distrib): The Danish 2006 After the Wedding, which won that year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, was shot by director Suzanne Biers in the then-trendy Dogma style, heavy on pseudo-verite camerawork and lighting that imparted a sense of immediacy to the drama. Bart Freundlich’s English-language remake dispenses with that style entirely. […]
THE NEST (no distrib): Sean Durkin’s first feature since 2011’s Martha Marcy May Marlene presents its emotions with such high-intensity beams that it often feels as though the film is going to slip into the thriller or even horror genre, but it’s actually just a family drama. Set in the Thatcher-era 1980s, its plot […]
MAGAZINE DREAMS: The hype was accurate: Jonathan Majors gives a titanic performance in Elijah Bynum’s Magazine Dreams. Playing Killian, a roided-up amateur bodybuilder obsessed with achieving glory in that profession, Majors somehow manages to be both massive and delicate, prone to rage but also abjectly needy for acceptance or connection. Majors never misjudges the […]
HONK FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL (no distrib): Scandal-ridden mega-churches aren’t exactly fresh territory for screens big (The Tears of Tammy Faye) or small (The Righteous Gemstones), with tones that range from wildly comic to solemn. Adamma Edo’s feature debut doesn’t have much to add to the subject, but it does have Sterling K. […]
I AM MOTHER (no distrib): Grant Sputore’s impressively controlled first feature brings us back to the post-apocalypse. In Michael Lloyd Green’s script, it appears as though the only surviving remnant of humanity is an unnamed girl (Clara Rugaard as a teen) raised from a fetus by a maternal robot (voiced by Rose Byrne). Mother […]
MARVELOUS AND THE BLACK HOLE: Goodhearted YA comfort food. Kate Tsang’s feature debut is about 13-year old Sammy (Miya Cech), who has become surly and rebellious toward her father Angus (Leonardo Nam) and sister Patricia (Kannon Omachi) since the death of her mother. Things become even worse when potential stepmother Marianne (Paulina Lule) enters […]
CAT PERSON: It seems to be necessary to establish one’s bona fides (or lack thereof) before commenting on Susanna Fogel’s Cat Person, so I’ll note that I’ve never read Kristen Roupenian’s celebrated New Yorker short story. I’m given to understand, however, that the entire third act of Michelle Ashford’s adaptation is an add-on, which […]
Kate Barker-Froyland’s directing debut SONG ONE is so wispy and insubstantial that the bytes making up its digital images seem barely capable of adhering to a screen. Clearly influenced by John Carney’s mini-musical Once, it makes Carney’s film look like an Andrew Lloyd-Webber spectacle by comparison. Barker-Froyland also wrote the minimal script, which almost exhausts its resources […]