12/14/2018

Blu-ray Review - Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti (2017)


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Artists have an overwhelming need to express themselves, to let pain or pleasure flow out of them like water, sublimating it until it becomes something new.

Yet as hard as it is for an artist to find the time, courage, and opportunity – financial or otherwise – to create, it's even harder to be the person whose job it is to stifle their own needs and individuality in order to support the artist and inspire their work.

For once artists apply their own meaning to the life of another, soon their support system become less a subject than a stepping stone used to reach a creative destination.


From the Mona Lisa to Zelda Fitzgerald to Hitchcock's cool blondes to Clapton's "Layla," muses have always been the most enigmatic and compelling figures in art, sadly because we seldom know who they really are as people outside the perspective of their "creator."

And this is the case in Edouard Deluc's Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti with Tehura (Tuheï Adams), who inspires penniless French painter Paul Gauguin (Vincent Cassel) after he leaves behind his wife and children – whom we imagine played the role of muse before – and moves to Tahiti in 1891 in order to follow his inner calling of life as a true artist.

Not bothering to give us much in the way of information about Paul Gauguin or his family before he sets off on his journey, even though the picture – credited to five writers – is based on Gauguin's controversial memoirs, I went into Deluc's film knowing very little about the artist and came out knowing roughly the same amount.


Uninterested in crafting a traditional biopic, Gauguin serves up a snapshot of the painter's time spent on the island during his first, alternately perilous and prolific voyage where, following an impromptu proposition made in a single conversation, he agrees to "wed" the beautiful Tehura who would become the subject of some of his most famous paintings.

Exceedingly well played by talented newcomer Adams, Tehura's role as the optimistic, good hearted, exotic young native who inspires a white man is reminiscent of Q'orianka Kilcher's Pocahontas in Terrence Malick's 2005 masterpiece, The New World. Yet although Malick's movie seems to have influenced Deluc's in terms of its overall approach, unfortunately Kilcher's heroine is far more three dimensional than Gauguin's poorly penned Tehura.

Having collapsed following a heart attack with complications from diabetes, after Gauguin (portrayed by charismatic character actor Vincent Cassel) takes Tehura as his bride, his health woes seem to subside. Invigorated, Gauguin begins painting the young woman so often that he is forced to improvise when he can no longer afford or find any remaining canvas on the island.


Inspiring his doctor with his newfound vitality, just as Tehura's smiling, supportive presence starts to turn everything around for Gauguin (at least temporarily), the film starts to go wrong.

Little more than a highlight reel of island life, as the co-writer and director flirts with but fails to explore the way that Europeans would exploit or idealize the exoticism of islanders – especially Gauguin who turned his relationship with a teenage girl into currency – it becomes apparent that Deluc had many ideas he wasn't quite sure how to bring to life.

Glossing over or romanticizing Gauguin's flaws as quirks, such as the demands placed on Tehura where the lack of food or rest (as he keeps her posing for hours on end) are the means used to justify his artistic ends, the film misses the opportunity to examine the imbalance of power between artist and muse as well as husband and wife.


Vacuous but beautifully shot by cinematographer Pierre Cottereau, although the gifted actors do their best to make the silence count, Voyage loses its hold on the audience by failing to delve deeper into Tehura and Gauguin's past or present to reveal what this time together in Tahiti really meant to them both on a personal level.

Trying to remedy this late into the picture, since the film is imbued with a largely romantic arc, Deluc delves into the jealousy and paranoia Gauguin has regarding the handsome, more age-appropriate neighbor who bonds with Tehura over time. But even though he dares to show us a darker side to the artist as he locks his bride indoors to keep her from leaving once her formerly infectious smile starts to fade, Deluc also locks up the point-of-view that matters most when it comes to Tehura.


Unfolding like a leisurely paced Malick movie, while those looking for any substantive information about Paul Gauguin will have to spend some time actually researching him as I did, the film will still appeal thanks to the always reliable Cassel and an enigmatic, largely silent, Mona Lisa-like performance by Adams who speaks volumes with a single glance.

And as our eponymous lead’s personality begins to change, we watch as she does, still wishing in vain for the painter to open up yet knowing that he won't, not because he doesn't want to but perhaps because he fears that if he does he'll have nothing left to express – about either of them – through his art.


Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Await Further Instructions (2018)


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Bringing home a new romantic partner to meet the parents is always stressful but traditionally it's hardest on the outsider.

Not so in the case of Nick (Sam Gittins) in Await Further Instructions who, mere moments into the movie, pulls into the driveway of his family home after a long drive and is instantly ready to put the car into reverse, asking his girlfriend Annji (Neerja Naik), "can we not do this?" before adding, "we're going to ruin everyone's Christmas."

It's the last half of Nick's plea that gives us pause and in the hands of another screenwriter might've been used to dig a little deeper into the mind of our main character but is employed in Johnny Kevorkian's movie like a jump scare, reminding us that we're watching a horror movie by foreshadowing the darkness to come.


Giving in to his girlfriend's wish to meet the family that the audience is already primed to be suspicious of before they give us cause, Nick introduces Annji to his people-pleaser mother (Abigail Cruttenden), racist grandfather (David Bradley), his bitter father (Grant Masters), heavily pregnant sister (Holly Weston), and brother-in-law (Kris Saddler).

From lewd comments about Nick being under his girlfriend's spell (only in much coarser language) to rude cracks about foreign doctors or ignorantly accusing Annji of sneaking Indian words into a Scrabble game, as Nick sticks up for them both in a series of escalating arguments, his reasons for not going home for three years suddenly become crystal clear.


Tired from the long day and in no shape to drive, they vow to make a run for it the next morning before everyone wakes up. Unfortunately, Nick and Annji are greeted with the horror movie equivalent of a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking when they open the front door of the house and discover that a mysterious, solid, and indeed black-as-coal substance has trapped them indoors without any communication to the outside world, save for the ominous titular message on the TV to "await further instructions."

With everyone's minds working overtime as they fear the worst and the TV flashing increasing demands at them (which Nick's military oriented grandfather and office manager father are all too willing to follow no questions asked), the young couple must try to find a way out of an even more impossible situation before the family either turns on each other or loses their minds.


An allegory about the dangers of television combined with a pitch black, cynical twist on the holiday season that warns you can never go home again or you may risk not leaving, Await Further Instructions feels like it would make an intriguing triple feature with the thematically similar, albeit vastly superior horror entries It's a Disaster and The Invitation.

Yet while the idea by screenwriter Gavin Williams is a good one in theory, by not bothering to develop the characters beyond the subtlety of an axe that Nick uses to try and knock down the mysterious wall keeping them in, we find we feel very little connection to our protagonists.


Likewise by taking all of the mystery and intrigue out of Instructions in favor of an over-reliance on not so much sci-fi horror special effects as chaotic visual excess, in the end we're left with one big mess that ruins the impact of the film's otherwise inventive premise.

Heavily stylized but narratively empty, Kevorkian wears his '80s era horror influences proudly throughout this work of budget British horror and while both he and Williams exhibit occasional flashes of potential, somewhere along the way they managed to trap themselves inside the heart of the film as well with no idea how to get out...except by chopping at the plot's brains with an axe.


Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

12/07/2018

Movie Review: The Marriage (2017)


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Having traveled to the border in the hopes of finding the remains of her parents who've been missing since the Kosovo War, at the beginning of writer-director Blerta Zeqiri's The Marriage, Anita (Adriana Matoshi) and her fiancé Bekim (Alban Ukaj) leave once again without closure and without answers.

Discussing their future family on the drive home – which relatives, elders, and strangers are all too happy to advise them about since the pair is older than the average married couple – Anita tells Bekim that if she doesn't get any information soon, she'll have to accept that they're gone. Thinking ahead, she explains that she doesn't want their kids growing up feeling like they're waiting for someone they've never met.


And as it turns out, that's a pretty telling line in The Marriage, which has gone on to become Kosovo's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the Academy Awards.

For shortly after Anita shares her own concerns about waiting for someone whom one's never met, she does just that as the couple runs into Nol (Genc Salihu), one of Bekim's closest friends who traded Kosovo for France but has since come back.

Perhaps surprising Bekim even more than Anita, when initially faced with the musician, Bekim looks as though he’s seeing a ghost of his own – missing and returned home after the war.


Quickly falling into an easy banter, the three drink and talk across two nights and it's only on the second night when she shows up halfway into the evening that Anita realizes there's some sort of intense, emotional rift between the two as Nol tells her that he's still pining for the love of his life.

Hoping to cheer the men up, be of some use, and undoubtedly strengthen the bond between not only herself and her beloved but also the man who seems to mean the most to him, the more Anita encourages Nol to fight like Romeo for his Juliet, the more we notice – long before she does – just how angry Beckim gets in response.


Bursting into an alcohol and subtext laced fight that threatens to drive a wedge between the couple as well as Beckim and his best friend, it’s at this point that the love triangle at the center of The Marriage starts to implode and each character asks themselves just what it is they really want when things aren't mapped out.

A bold, uncompromising, and potent work, while Zeqiri's film occasionally suffers from its share of too conveniently well-timed plot contrivances, her humanistic decision to avoid easy opportunities for cliché or turn Anita into a horrible third wheel helps set Marriage apart from thematically similar efforts.


Subtly illustrating the pressure she's under in a male-dominated society where a woman's worth comes from her role as a wife and mother, Zeqiri devotes as much energy to Anita as she does her male leads, fully endearing her to viewers before Nol and Bekim's storyline inevitably takes over.

A remarkably intimate, contemplative work that – through the aid of handheld cameras and tight shots – is given an intentionally hyper-realistic, fly-on-the-wall, cinema vérité feel, Zeqiri puts us in such close quarters with the film's characters to reinforce the idea that although they're technically protected by the law, LGBTQ individuals in Kosovo "closet" themselves behind closed doors in order to survive.


Reminiscent of the heartbreaking one-two punch of Todd Haynes's Carol and Far From Heaven as well as Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, The Marriage would make a superb double feature with Lee's second feature, The Wedding Banquet, which views the same basic premise through a comedic lens and features similarly lived-in, believable turns by its main trio.

Zeroing in on the collision of three people trying to plan for a future they're not quite ready to face in a society that currently doesn't offer many answers, in Sundance award-winning short filmmaker Blerta Zeqiri’s strong character-driven, feature-length debut, we discover that closure isn't something we're given, it's something we find along the way.


Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Hospitality (2018)


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Donna (Emmanuelle Chriqui) may no longer be a prostitute but she still has a pimp of sorts in the form of JR Bourne's menacing sheriff.

Bullying her physically, emotionally, and sexually, at the start of this retro indie, he conditions her with a slap before literally acting out the rewind button of a VCR when she fails to greet him in the manner he requires.


Hospitality, it seems, is still her business and the sheriff takes a cut of every hour a guest stays at the bed-and-breakfast Donna converted from a brothel roughly twenty years ago upon discovering she was pregnant with her eighteen-year-old cognitively challenged son Jimmy (Conner McVicker).

Celebrating her son's birthday on the very same day that Sam Trammell's handsome drifter Cam checks in for the second time in twenty years after a long stint in prison, much like the fresh towels and linens supplied in Donna's dully named B&B Hospitality, the titular film wastes no time serving up all of the elements needed for B-movie thrills later on.


From the two men on opposite sides of the law – and the protagonist with a past caught in between them – to the gun and cash that are flashed onscreen within the first half, writer-directors Nick Chakwin and David Guglielmo's intentional play on The Postman Always Rings Twice styled like "the cinematic equivalent" of a paperback* turns the pages quickly in this fast-paced, roughly 80 minute offering.


And while the talented cast, especially the always underutilized Emmanuelle Chriqui (who made me see her in a whole new light opposite Simon Baker in The Mentalist), help give the admittedly dubious film a much-needed level of authenticity, by the time it reaches its second or third the overly convenient plot twist, Hospitality has damn near broken our suspension-of-disbelief.

Lacking much-needed data regarding how and why she has the arrangement with the sheriff aside from a few context clues that would have been much more fascinating to explore aloud instead of an exchange about whether or not Donna is on the pill (which a couple regularly having sex would've already had), Hospitality builds an air of Noir without a solid foundation.


As such, it misses some key plot points and borrows others from Noir efforts both old and new including No Country for Old Men in particular.

And while ultimately the film's impressive cast as well as the decision to move as fast as possible until the wheels come off hold our interest long enough that we look forward to what's next from the filmmakers, in the end we wish that this – their second feature – had delivered more than just the bare minimum of Noir hospitality.


*As described by the filmmakers in the production notes.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Holly Star (2018)


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Broke puppeteer Sloan (Katlyn Carlson) goes from controlling Santa's movements in a TV ad to searching for his buried treasure in Maine after a blow to the head shakes loose a childhood memory of a man dressed as Santa Claus burying a bag full of money in Holly Star.

Though initially unsure whether or not it was just a hallucination – recently fired and demoralized from struggling to monetize her very particular set of skills – once Sloan begins to find more evidence corroborating the memory, she enlists her best friend Kay K (Taya Patt) to join her on the adventure.

A paintball obsessed wannabe guerrilla who lives off-the-grid in the suburbs with walkie talkies instead of cell phones, Kay K is all too eager to take part, not only because she misses the childhood friend she hasn't seen in a year but also because she's up for anything, even if it means trying to create another near-death experience to inspire another memory.

Essentially the role that would have been given to Melissa McCarthy in a studio backed venture, although initially entertaining, unfortunately Kay K amuses as much as she annoys as the film continues and she's contrasted with a largely bland main character.

A similar problem to the one in The Spy Who Dumped Me, Holly Star suffers from inconsistent plotting and characterization which makes Sloan hard to identify with or root for, largely because, aside from her plight and people who continue to value her puppetry talent passed down from her beloved grandfather (which all but vanishes onscreen), we know so little about her.


And perhaps it's because of this that Sloan comes across as greedy, which is a charge actually leveled at her by her childhood crush Andy (Brian Muller), who hires Sloan to sell Christmas trees on his family's seasonal lot.

While writer-director Michael A. Nickles tries to better balance out his protagonist as she visits her tango dancing grandmother (Pamela Chabora) in the senior home where she's a resident, all in all, the film has so much going on that in spite of the filmmaker's best intentions, everything – from the plot to the people – is shortchanged.

Segueing uneasily from holiday treasure hunt turned family mystery to romance, although Nickles is clearly not hurting for ideas, he's unable to combine them in such a way to adequately pay off on them all in one film alone as Star differs from scene to scene.

Still, quite a promising voice with a lot to say, even though this overly quirky Bottle Rocket meets Garden State style holiday comedy didn't quite work, I look forward to any future Nickles family treasure hunts...maybe next time with more puppet strings and fewer dangling plot strands.


Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

11/29/2018

Blu-ray Review: Les Parents Terribles (1948)

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AKA: The Storm Within

Just like some men steer clear of (or take advantage of) women with father issues, there's an old adage which argues that if you really want to know what a man's like, look at how he treats his mother.

Needless to say, since our parents are the people who introduce us to not only everything but love and relationships in particular, our baggage starts long before we ever have a romantic love of our own.

No stranger to mining his personal life for material in a variety of mediums from autobiographical books, poems, and plays to his expressionistic masterpieces in the canvas or celluloid frame, Jean Cocteau takes this idea and runs with it to satirical, melodramatic, and psychological extremes in the film he considers to be "cinematically speaking, [his] great success," 1948’s Les Parents Terribles.


Based upon a play which Cocteau had written ten years earlier and adapted by the filmmaker, Terribles stars the same cast who took part in a very successful Parisian revival of the work in 1946 including Cocteau favorites Jean Marais and Josette Day who played the titular roles in the director's now classic Beauty and the Beast (also made in ‘46).

With a title that seems to be a play on Cocteau's famous 1929 novel, Les Enfants Terribles, Parents has been recently restored and released to Cohen Film Collection Blu-ray to celebrate its 70th anniversary, following a short theatrical run last spring. Complete with screen tests and interviews, Cocteau enthusiasts in particular will want to track the tragic chamber piece down.

A variation of, as Richard Peña says in the Blu-ray's introduction, Jean-Paul Sartre's famous phrase that "hell is other people," shortly into Cocteau's film which is centered on twenty-twenty-year-old Michel (Marais) breaking it to his parents that he's engaged, we discover that "hell is other family members."


Smothered by his mother Yvonne (Yvonne de Bray), when Michel confesses that the reason he's been out all night is because he's fallen in love with the twenty-five-year-old Madeleine (Day) whom he met at secretarial school, Yvonne reacts like a jealous lover.

Lashing out at the son she's made the focus of her entire world, Yvonne is in for an even greater shock when she learns that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and discovers that the woman that her husband has been secretly seeing on the side is the very same one ready to marry her son.

Caught in a love triangle multiple times over as Cocteau makes intriguing, downright Freudian implications about gaining and losing sons and daughters to love, the sudsy, psychologically driven soap opera also illustrates the way that the romantic sins and secrets of the past are bound to come back on this carousel of life.


For it seems as though Michel was raised by a love triangle as well, in the form of his Aunt Léo (Gabrielle Dorziat) who was actually engaged to Michel's father Georges (Marcel André) first before he started to have stronger feelings for her sister and married Yvonne instead.

However, after Yvonne replaced her husband with her young son in terms of complete affection, Léo – who has stepped in as a virtual housemaid and dutiful caretaker of her frail, excitable, diabetic sister – has spent years stewing in anger over what might have been.

It's at this point that Cocteau confronts the admittedly dubious setup head on. And although he waits to address us directly in a closing voice-over, we can practically hear him speaking through his characters with the witty observation, "It's unbelievable! If there weren't situations like this, there’d be no plays. We are classic characters."


Still with drama everywhere in sight and an inevitable series of confrontations ahead, Cocteau also seems to argue that, while it's easy to speculate about the lives of others, we only know what goes on in our own household... if indeed we even know that much.

Trying to highlight that subtext and the power dynamics between the characters as they jockey for position, guilt, and scheme (which makes this a superb title to play as a thematic double feature alongside the Tennessee Williams play turned 1958 film, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in particular), Cocteau marries the mediums and techniques of stage blocking and screen framing seamlessly.

Whether holding Michel in a dominant position above Yvonne as he tells his mother about his engagement or keeping the characters in solo shots to illustrate the rift between them, Cocteau enhances the past formats Terribles has taken from written to staged – driving everything home in an emotional work that Andre Bazin dubbed "pure cinema."


And though Les Parents threatens to weigh you down with its dense emotional baggage, somehow Cocteau knows precisely how to layer and present everything with the lightest of touches that makes the film’s brisk 100 minute running time fly right by.

Of interest to psych students and a must watch for francophiles and film buffs, releasing just before the holidays, Les Parents is a terribly wonderful film that you'll want to bring home... just maybe not to mother or father. Then again, bringing the drama is precisely what Cocteau would've wanted.


Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 3 (2018)


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Shining a light on the audience, before every Pixar feature, the studio reaffirms their commitment to short filmmaking not only through their latest offering – which dazzles us just before the main attraction – but within the Pixar logo itself.

Evoking an image from the company's 1986 animated short Luxo Jr. with that now iconic bouncing desk lamp, more than three decades and three volumes of short films later, Disney Pixar's passion for creative storytelling remains just as strong today regardless of running time.


In fact, looking at the thirteen films included in this gorgeously transferred, recently released Blu-ray combo pack, one could go as far as to say that while Pixar's blockbuster features still thrill, it's in the studio's non-franchise shorts where they take the most risks.

While many shorts still embrace some of Pixar's favorite staples including unusual paths to romance or family-centric tales of parents learning to let go as children come-of-age, with new twists on familiar themes, these personal and often jaw-droppingly ambitious shorts introduce us to new cultures, countries, traditions, and perspectives.


Kicking things off with one of the most moving shorts I've seen in a long time, Chinese-Canadian storyboard artist Domee Shi became the first woman to helm a Pixar short with 2018’s Bao, which mixes fairy tale structure (including a dash of Pinocchio) with her own background for this bittersweet saga about an empty-nester.

A perfect companion piece to Alan Barillaro's 2016 Academy Award winner Piper, the disc’s early films – including the inventive Lou from Dave Mullins which focuses on bullying – flow nicely from one to the next as they tell a story about aging children and parents struggling to assert their independence while staying connected to home.


In the thrilling entry Sanjay's Super Team, writer-director Sanjay Patel puts a superhero spin on the Hindi gods he prayed to alongside his father as a child when he thought he'd much rather be watching cartoons.

Checking back in with some of Pixar's most iconic movies and characters, while on the whole, the standalone franchise shorts are pretty hit or miss, Riley's First Date?, Party Central, and Partysaurus Rex from Inside Out, Monsters University, and Toy Story respectively are definite highlights.


Helping to balance out the mayhem of some of the wilder shorts (even if this volume goes in this reverse chronological order), Pixar proves once again that animation can appeal to adults just as much as children with Saschka Unseld's groundbreaking 2013 short The Blue Umbrella and James Ford Murphy's lyrical Lava, which was made a year later.

From the free will and heightened realism on display in Umbrella, where a love story plays out on a dark city street as inanimate objects guide two umbrellas together to the fated romance of a lonely volcano hoping to find someone to "lava," the two works use music incredibly well, whether augmenting Unseld's dialogue-free film or literally telling Ford Murphy's story through song.


Also featuring two bonus shorts and filmmaker introductions, this stunning collection of admittedly similarly themed but mightily different shorts is filled with the heart, empathy, and magic we've come to expect from a studio that's set out to bring us closer together under the warmth of Pixar's illuminating light as it captures, interprets, and reflects the emotional journey of life.


Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement DVD Review: La Boyita (2009)


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AKA: The Last Summer of La Boyita

Perfectly capturing that confusing time in an adolescent girl's life when she's simultaneously holding onto the last remnants of childhood while also hurrying to grow up, Argentine actress turned writer-director Julia Solomonoff's 2009 feature La Boyita is set over the lazy days of a pivotal summer in the life of young Jorgelina (Guadalupe Alonso).

Given a crash course in puberty by her older sister Luciana (María Clara Merendino) who has been pushing her adoring younger sister away in exchange for privacy, push-up bras, and PG-13 movies with friends ever since she got her first period, Jorgelina looks for any excuse to recapture the closeness they'd shared only recently.


Hugging her sleeping sister goodbye in a hammock in a breathtaking shot that echoes the haunting innocence of Sofia Coppola's Virgin Suicides – rather than go to the beach for the summer with Luciana and her mother – Jorgelina opts to give her sister the space she craves by traveling to the Argentinean countryside with her father in the early 1980s.

With miles of land as far as the eye can see, Jorgelina begins to explore her surroundings with Mario (Nicolás Treise), a slightly older boy roughly Luciana's age who works the property alongside his father when he isn't training to make his jockey debut at an upcoming festival in the community.

Having spent time with him in the past, as she helps bring out the hard-working boy’s playful side, Jorgelina's bond with (and crush on) her summer friend awakens new feelings within our lead. And their connection only increases when Mario takes her into his confidence and she tries to sleuth out the answer to a problem that nobody – from the kids to his parents to her own brainy physician father – knows quite how to solve.


Reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Man in the Moon with its focus on a child's loss of innocence as they come of age, Solomonoff's hauntingly tender film is not only told predominantly through the eyes of a girl who would likely have been great friends with Mockingbird's Scout Finch but also features an Atticus like figure in the form of her father.

Transporting us right from the start to a distinct time and place, in La Boyita, we can practically feel the heat of the film's translucent sunlight beating down from the celluloid and right into our scalp.

A surprisingly sensitive, still incredibly timely tale, as both a writer and director, Solomonoff uses the power of its simple and straightforward narrative to extol the importance of love and acceptance, regardless of the limitations placed on children growing up with gender roles and expectations so stiflingly defined.


Establishing and foreshadowing her theme early on through Jorgelina's observations and interactions with her sister to a conversation with her dad where he tells her that as far as Mario's family is concerned, the reason that he must do well as a jockey is "to prove he's a man," Solomonoff pushes these boundaries in this lushly photographed, unforgettable film.

Clocking in at a mere 88 minutes, the newly released title is making its North American debut both on Film Movement DVD and the studio's new superb streaming platform Film Movement Plus.

While much like Jorgelina and truth about the world around her, La Boyita might be easy to overlook at first glance, if you give Solomonoff and her young leads your time, they’ll ride away with your heart.


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