Movie Review: Alone With Her Dreams (2020)

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Warning his friend not to put so much stock into his dreams for the future that he loses sight of reality, in “The Shawshank Redemption,” Red (Morgan Freeman) tells Andy (Tim Robbins) that “hope is” not only “a dangerous thing,” but it can also “drive a man insane.”

Of course, for that to happen, you'd have to view hope as a good thing, which is the opposite relationship that eleven-year-old Lucia (Marta Castiglia) has with the feeling in director Paolo Licata's “Alone With Her Dreams.” Knowing of hope's pitfalls, she explains that “when a person 'hopes' to do something, they never end up doing it,” which is a lesson that her grandmother Maria (Lucia Sardo) takes to heart, quoting Lucia's words back to her in the Italian film's final act.

Applying this logic to her parents' sudden qualification that they, along with her younger brother, “hope” they can return home for Christmas after so many conversations where it'd previously been a certainty, Lucia sees the writing on the wall when she hears her least favorite word on the phone. Saying that she wishes she hadn't talked to them so she could've gone on assuming they'd come back for the holidays, Lucia begins feeling lonelier than ever, living with the stubbornly defiant Maria in her tiny hometown on the coast of Sicily, after the rest of her family fled to France to make a better living.

Caught in the middle of a family feud that goes back to her grandmother's generation – as the stern woman has forbidden Lucia from having anything to do with Maria's sister Pina (Ileana Rigano) or Pina's daughter Rosamaria (Katia Greco) – as Lucia waits to join her family in France, she struggles to find out just what led to their rift. Realizing that the truth of the situation is much darker than the gossip she's been led to believe, soon history repeats itself in a cruel twist of fate as the tragedy of the women's past threatens to envelop Lucia as well.

A sun-drenched coming-of-age saga, based upon the novel by Catena Fiorello and adapted for the screen by Licata, Fiorello, and Ugo Chiti, this languidly paced, atmospheric film takes a good thirty minutes to immerse you in its near desolate Sicilian environment. With its one store that, for a fee, will let you use a phone (which is then lowered out of the window by a rope basket) and its statue of the Virgin Mary that residents donate to in order to ask God for wishes, in this town, we feel as though we've wandered into a whole other world.

Centered on a sparsely populated seaside community where nearly everyone knows everyone else or, as in Lucia's case, is related to several other residents, “Alone With Her Dreams” seems to be set in the 1960s or '70s. Timeless, foreign, and remote, the town we find ourselves in is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of Rome, made popular by some of the biggest Italian cinema exports from the era.

Yet as “Alone With Her Dreams” begins to incorporate themes of how abuse, trauma, and shame are passed down from one generation to the next under the guise of secrets and lies, it morphs into an incredibly timely work. Additionally, it's one you just might find that you want to discuss with the women in your family tree as soon as it ends. 

Described as a “shocking... new Italian classic from the heart,” by director Oliver Stone, the film is now available on-demand from Corinth Films after a successful, award-winning, festival run. Requiring patience in viewers used to having most things spelled out for them in the first ten minutes of a movie, “Alone With Her Dreams” uses a natural approach that's more indicative of classic Italian neorealist filmmaking.

Eschewing the building blocks of most coming-of-age fare, while initially, I wasn't sure what to make of it, the film grows both more compelling and more universally relatable with each successive scene. Reminiscent of the way that the family sagas helmed by Taiwanese New Wave filmmakers preferred to let their characters live and breathe rather than try to manufacture a protracted plot out of thin air, while Licata's “Alone With Her Dreams” isn't for every filmgoer, those who stay with it will find it's a hard movie to shake.

Potent and wonderfully acted, to Licata's credit, this ensemble drama is brought vividly to life with more color and verve than we typically see in Sicilian set features, which are far too often painted purely in the shades of sun and sand. Likewise, it's a rare, vital, feminist effort about what it means to be a girl growing up in an oppressive Catholic culture where there's much more going on beneath the surface than women are traditionally allowed to discuss. 

An unusual and affecting film, in “Alone With Her Dreams,” Lucia and her Sicilian female relatives learn that, rather than hope for a spiritual intervention or the help of a man, sometimes it's better just to take care of things themselves... in whatever way they see fit. 

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title 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 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 Movie Review: Once Upon a River (2019)

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Growing up in central Michigan in 1977 along the fictional Stark River, fifteen-year-old Margo Crane (Kenadi DelaCerna) knows two things. A crack shot, after only a few minutes of screen time, we see in Margo a girl who knows how to live off the land – with or without the help of her doting father (Tatanka Means) or flattering uncle (Coburn Goss). Unfortunately, what she also knows is just how much she misses her mom who walked out on her and her father several years earlier. And sadly, her ache for a female role model seems to be at its strongest now that she's on the cusp of womanhood. 

In fact, it's a sentiment that's relayed to us in Margo's opening voiceover, but even without hearing her say those words, we can see this longing both in her body language and her uncertainty as she puts on red lipstick before a party but then self-consciously rubs it off before she leaves the bathroom. A beautiful girl who – as we all did at that age – drinks up the attention given to her by men since she's still testing the waters of her own power and burgeoning sexuality, unfortunately rather than have someone to discuss all of these conflicting feelings with, she is left to navigate this path on her own. 

Ushered into a physical relationship by someone she thought she trusted before she could back up, take a breath, and say no, this startling event is followed by something even more devastating. Soon Margo decides to pack her things and go far away from the only town she's ever known, in the hopes of finding the mom who'd wandered away to find herself so many years before. 

Based upon the eponymous novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell, “Once Upon a River” – which marks the feature filmmaking debut from producer, actress, and musician Haroula Rose – belongs to that distinctly American subgenre of adolescent odysseys, best epitomized by Mark Twain's “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” A young adult version of a western and one that feels like it would play nicely in a thematic film festival alongside “The Journey of Natty Gann,” “Lean on Pete,” “Leave No Trace,” “The Cold Lands,” and “Winter's Bone,” to its slight detriment, “River” fails to overcome the genre's biggest hurdle.

Largely solitary efforts – often about young Woody Guthrie types taking to the open road (or the river) – in order to avoid making a modern-day silent movie, films in this category routinely sprinkle in quirky new characters for our leads to befriend throughout. “Once Upon a River,” is no exception to the rule. All too frequently, it feels as though you can set your watch to when it's just about time for Margo to swap one place and/or person for another, including the scene-stealing John Ashton as a kindly old man she encounters early on. 

Yet even though the movie isn't as wholeheartedly successful or emotionally all-encompassing as, say, “Lean on Pete” and “Leave No Trace” (easily two of the greatest films of this type in recent memory), it's quite compelling nonetheless. Especially unique given the fact that it centers on a headstrong young woman who goes searching for one thing but winds up finding herself, "River" rushes through a few pointed turns of events that don't land quite as well as they should without focusing on the why and how our young protagonist is processing them the way that she does.

Still, what it lacks in structure and nuance, it makes up for in its exceptional technical craftsmanship. Well-acted by talented newcomer DelaCerna, and shot with tenderness and a lived-in sensibility by cinematographer Charlotte Hornsby, which makes the film resemble an old '70s era home movie, “Once Upon a River” is a worthwhile journey all the same.

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title 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 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: How to Build a Girl (2019)

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Even before sixteen-year-old Johanna Morrigan (Beanie Feldstein) grabbed a box of red hair dye so bright it could be seen from space in order to reinvent herself as firebrand rock critic Dolly Wilde, she was the very definition of "extra" and proud of it. In fact, as we learn at the start of How to Build a Girl, the precociously bright Wolverhampton girl seemed to operate under the assumption that you should never do less when more is available.

Turning in thirty-three page essays in place of the five required by her assignment, Johanna not only didn't know when to say when but long before she started spending her time going to rock clubs, carousing, and writing all night before she woke up minutes later for school, she loved to burn the candle at both ends.

Indulging in rich fantastical conversations with figures like Sylvia Plath (Lucy Punch) and Sigmund Freud (Michael Sheen) who come to life on her "God Wall" partition that splits the room she shares with her loyal brother Krissi (Laurie Kynaston) right down the middle, when her piece on the Annie soundtrack gets her foot in the door at a local newspaper, Johanna breaks the damn thing down.

Invited there as part of a bet because nobody could believe that someone would write with such earnest passion about a children's musical, after an imaginary pep talk from Bjork, Johanna sets out to prove to her new colleagues, family, and classmates that instead of the nerdy girl with glasses who lives in her head, she is an iconoclastic early ‘90s woman of action.

Given additional courage, thanks to a nine pound makeover with hair dye, dark second hand clothes (including a top hat which will become her signature), and that new wild pseudonym Dolly Wilde, in How to Build a Girl, Johanna Morrigan makes good on her name and forgets who she truly is in the process.

Knowing that cynicism and snark sells and eager to provide for her cash-strapped family, she goes from writing sweet, sensitive pieces about music and the artists she loves (including Alfie Allen's dreamy John Kite) to take down hits that earn her the "Asshole of the Year Award" before reality and remorse catches up with her.

A shallow yet deeply cynical film masquerading as a tender coming-of-age story based on the semiautobiographical novel by Caitlin Moran and adapted by the author, though it has everything in the world going for it, How to Build a Girl is as authentic as a box of hair dye and as in flux as our leading lady when it comes to its sudden lurches in rhythm and tone.

Tenuous and inconsistent, although it takes a cue from Britcoms like the Bridget Jones series (which has producers in common with this one) in its initial set-up, the movie from acclaimed, award-winning small screen director Coky Giedroyc has as many walls up as Johanna has "gods" on that partition in Wolverhampton.

Unwilling to delve beyond the surface of our lead character's ever-changing facade, for a majority of the first act, we're asked to laugh at Johanna rather than with her. And though a top-notch Feldstein is the highlight of the picture, Girl only endears Johanna to us in a gorgeous sequence when she spends a romantic day in Dublin with Allen and lets down her guard to show both him and us who she really is. Unfortunately, the effect is short-lived, as just like Wilde, the movie seesaws so quickly and so improbably that — rather than a realistic portrait of Johanna's struggle to find herself during adolescence — it feels like a bad cliché at the expense of teenage girls as opposed to in celebration of them.

Never seeing the forest for the trees, How to Build a Girl focuses so intently on individual moments — and with its first rate cast and amazing soundtrack it does land some great ones — that it doesn't bother to question whether it flows organically from one scene to the next. And this problem is magnified tenfold by the film's end, which wraps everything up in a thoroughly unearned bow, mere minutes after the increasingly dark film finds Johanna hitting a dangerous rock bottom in a sequence that comes out of nowhere and is cheapened by a jolt of humor, which is sure to confuse young girls who might be watching.

An all-around misfire that should've been right up my alley as a precocious young nerd who tried to grow up too quickly in her '90s teen years and join the writing world as well, perhaps one of the reasons I was so utterly disappointed by Girl is because I went in assuming I'd see, if not me than others I could relate to, and left shaking my head at just how many opportunities were missed. From randy colleagues who proposition her with come-ons and casual sexual harassment — resulting in one very funny scene when Johanna sits on a man's lap and gives him the opposite of what he wanted — to becoming the morally torn breadwinner of her family, there were endless areas that the film could've planted a flag in and explored.

More like playing a rock critic for Halloween than shadowing a real one for a day, while it's one thing to barely touch on what life is like as a professional writer, the thing I can't forgive is that it does the same thing for the teenage girls it's purporting to salute. Going for more, more, more, just like Johanna even before she went Wilde, eventually we realize that the more Moran and Giedroyc throw onto the the pile, the less we care about the girl who should be so much more interesting than those fire engine red roots which ultimately serve as a placeholder for a personality and a character in search of a film.


Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. 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.

Short Takes: Gregory's Girl (1980)

"It's hard work being in love, 'ey, especially when you don't know which girl."

A tale of unrequited love that might be masking something even greater, Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth's sophomore film — which was made with a number of actors from the Glasgow Youth Theater — centers on a teenage boy who falls for the girl who takes his place as center forward on the school soccer team.

Focusing more on character, setting, and atmosphere than plot, Gregory's Girl, is reminiscent of one of those meandering Charlie Brown specials in the '70s where at first, you're not terribly engaged but every so often, something adorable happens out of the blue and you inexplicably find yourself wishing you could hug it.

From the fully formed fascinating supporting characters I longed to know more about — which is a damn hard feat for a writer to pull off — to wholly original moments like the one where the teens lie on the grass and dance, Gregory's Girl might take awhile to get going but its charm sneaks up on you just like a youthful romance.

Restored and transferred to Blu-ray by Film Movement Classics with care, though one might expect Forsyth's charming, guileless, tender work to play like a dated film from its era, the emotional terrain it navigates of the confusion, optimism, and frustration of first love remains as fresh as it is timeless.

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Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. 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.

Netflix Movie Review: Tall Girl (2019)

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Whether it's the way you laugh too loud when you're nervous, stammer when you're shy, or seem to forget everything you've ever studied when you're handed a test, everyone has at least one thing that they wish they could change about themselves. And while most of us have figured out how to cope with or adapt to this perceived flaw as adults, there's nothing like high school to magnify these insecurities even more and doubly so when the thing we wish we could change about ourselves is something physical.

In nearly six foot two inch sixteen-year-old Jodi's case, although a simple search on the internet reveals that there is such a thing as height reduction surgery, the excruciatingly painful procedure isn't exactly a practical solution for the New Orleans high school junior played by Ava Michelle. Hoping for the same effect, she tries slouching her way into invisibility to avoid all of the snickers, stares, and inane comments by classmates who ask her how the weather is up there, even though that line is older than the Civil War battles she reads about in her American history textbook.

Establishing the theme, first as she describes the alienation experienced by the main character in A Confederacy of Dunces to a classmate and then in her voice-over narration, Jodi serves as an pleasant, immediately relatable stand-in for any hangup the viewer might have about themselves. However, as well drawn as the three-dimensional Jodi is, the rest of the film's characters are thinly sketched caricatures of retro teen movie archetypes by comparison.

And this is evident right from the start as we meet her fiercest supporters including the fashionably hip Fareeda (Anjelika Washington) who puts bullies in their place with one well spun line and the Duckie inspired Jack Dunkleman (played by scene stealer Griffin Gluck) who's had a crush on Jodi for as long as Kimmy (Clara Wilsey) has tormented her since they were children. Suffice it to say that, despite the affability of the actors bringing them to life, everyone in Tall Girl's orbit seems like they've wandered over from film sets of decades gone by, which basically makes them the "how's the weather up there?" of teen movie characters.

Although screenwriter Sam Wolfson tries to update the proceedings with escape rooms and gluten free bakeries, it feels mostly stale. Inconsistent in its characterization as it undercuts Jodi's mom (Angela Kinsey) as a passive aggressive prom queen and makes her dad (Steve Zahn) a hyper focused alarmist waiting for his tall daughter's health to fail in their earliest scenes before they mellow into almost entirely different people later on, it's to Kinsey and Zahn's credit that we remain interested in their roles.

While it's refreshing to make Jodi's beautiful pageant perfect older sister Harper (Sabrina Carpenter) so supportive of her "big little sister" instead of making her another object of misery in Jodi's life, with Harper's laughable grasp of history and pleas that Jodi should slap her if she eats carbs, she quickly turns into yet another stereotype.

Hopeful when Stig (Luke Eisner), a dreamy Swedish exchange student arrives who's even taller than she is, Jodi experiences her first serious crush and turns to Harper for help attracting the boy who's staying with Dunkleman. Pursuing Jodi in very different ways to differing degrees of success, Eisner and Gluck play off each other very well and share some unexpectedly funny, awkward scenes in the process. Things get even more complicated when her nemesis Kimmy sets her sights on and lands the handsome Swede, but when the two find they have a musical connection, the first of several love triangles develops.

Unwisely relegating Jodi's best friend Fareeda to extra status as the film goes on when some of the makeover scenes with Carpenter and Kinsey might've benefited from a young comedic buffer as opposed to the requisite mini dressing room montage and a lame in-film ad for Mac Cosmetics, it's clear that the film just doesn't know how to make adequate use of its lively ensemble. Not the only gimmicky scene, Tall Girl features a cringe-worthy moment where Jodi's parents host a Tip Toppers tall person's club party that goes nowhere. Likewise, infusing the film with a questionable message where each time Jodi starts to have confidence, it's inspired by a guy either finding her attractive or doing something selfless for her, by the time we reach the obligatory Mean Girls reminiscent big moment at the dance where our heroine literally tells us what she's learned, it doesn't seem remotely genuine or earned.

Still entertaining enough to watch in bed on a sick day or up late at a sleepover, despite Tall Girl's wholly original main character with whom many viewers will easily identify thanks to their own hangups, it's one of Netflix's weakest original YA romcoms. Taking a backseat to the streaming giant favorite To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Tall Girl also pales in comparison to the similarly themed, infinitely better structured (and likewise '80s inspired) Sierra Burgess is a Loser.

Yet with the color blocked background on display in Tall Girl's opening frames as Jodi discusses Dunces, the keen visual eye of first time feature filmmaker Nzingha Stewart makes for some truly memorable scenes that keep our interest even when the film itself starts to meander.

A romcom loving tall girl myself (and one who — just shy of six feet — was actually taller than her male first grade teacher when she was in the first grade), needless to say, I was easily the ideal audience for the film. Unfortunately, no matter how much I wished otherwise, in the end the Netflix movie plays like a version of teen movie Cliffs Notes where everything stays on the surface and, save for one moving scene with Steve Zahn, never gets too deep.

Though Tall Girl comes up short — to use a criticism that's sure to be the critic's version of "how's the weather up there," — it's still an admirable attempt to walk a mile in a sixteen-year-old girl's size thirteen men's shoes. Bolstered by a charming cast, while it's obvious that the film's heart is in the right place, unfortunately, Girl needs more authenticity and less artifice to make it count.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://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: Genèse (2018)

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AKA: Genesis

I know he likes me but does he like me? How do I ask her to be my girlfriend? What does he mean we should stay together but see other people?

Three Québécois teenagers navigate their first twinges of love, the devastation of heartbreak, the mysteries of desire, and other affairs of the heart in Philippe Lesage's new film Genèse, which follows in the footsteps of his previous pictures Copenhagen: A Love Story and The Demons in blending together memoir and fiction.

Often letting the camera linger on the behavior and body language of its main characters and the way that it changes when they're in front of a classroom, crowd, or alone, Genèse uses sumptuous, languorous visuals and its moodily atmospheric soundtrack to deposit us into the heart of the film in a way that recalls the work of Sofia Coppola and Wong Kar-wai.

Drawing on his background as a documentary filmmaker to establish the film's setting in and around private schools, colleges, and camps in Quebec, Lesage paints a picture of three teens, different both on the surface and in personality, who are looking for love.

In the film's strongest and most emotionally arresting storyline, we meet Guillaume (Théodore Pellerin) who, though always up for a laugh or impression as the class clown at his private boys school, is rather introspective and insecure deep down. Reading J. D. Salinger and listening to The Smiths, Guillaume is the type of dreamy eyed boy we would've had a crush on in high school, only to discover later on that he has a complicated crush of his own that might redefine his entire life.

Startled when her first serious boyfriend tells her that he thinks they should be free to sleep with other people, Guillaume's older half-sister Charlotte (Noée Abita) is sent reeling, moving from one relationship to the next (and always with the wrong guy), which has devastating consequences as the film continues and editor Mathieu Bouchard-Malo weaves the two plots together.

Venturing away from the city into a nature based coda, we're introduced to the stand-in for the filmmaker in the form of adolescent Félix (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier), who faces the first stirrings of love for a girl he becomes enamored of at summer camp. Though still filmed in a lush, contemporary style by cinematographer Nicolas Canniccioni, there's something delightfully old fashioned about the pacing and mood of the final section of Genèse, which feels as though it could be played side by side with François Truffaut's frothy 400 Blows follow-up and tale of first love, Antoine and Colette.

A welcome shot of instantly relatable nostalgia, Genèse's last act is played in a higher, lighter key than the rest of the picture. Yet, coming as it does after a shocking act of violence takes place, which is immediately glossed over by ignoring the aftermath, it takes a minute for the film (as well as the viewer) to convincingly ease back into the innocent reverie of summer flirtation and romance.

Inspired by real stories of assault that had been shared with Lesage by friends, while the stark, matter-of-fact portrayal alarms us enough, the film’s real misstep was in leaving these characters much too quickly before we truly know how they are, which gives the scene a cavalier aura that I can't imagine the filmmaker had intended. Yet tonal and structural misstep aside, Genèse manages to fall back into place when its last young protagonist falls in love.

Using music — especially "Outside" by Tops as a motif throughout — much like Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats, Genèse boasts a superb soundtrack that you'll find yourself wanting to Shazam multiple times throughout the film. Translating the characters' inner lives in a way we can easily understand through not only its musical counterpoint but also the way in which the camera holds on the faces of the trio as they try to reconcile reality with their hearts, Lesage invites us to take the journey as well — walking beside the teens in good times and bad. Like a secret diary come to life with all of its highs and lows, and the little things we know that will stay with us forever, Philippe Lesage's Genèse feels like the cinematic equivalent of a memory.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://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.

DVD Review: Back of the Net (2019)

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Before she accidentally got on the wrong bus and wound up not at Harold Academy Australian Semester at Sea but Harold Soccer Academy instead, the only experience that young gifted American science student Cory Bailey (Sofia Wylie) had with the sport was spray painting soccer balls for her AP solar system diorama.

Forced to get a lot more acquainted with soccer since, by the time she's discovered her mistake her ship has literally sailed and her parents are practicing medicine in New Dehli at the moment, Cory has no choice but to make peace with the ball she'd much rather paint than kick.

Thrilled when she finds out she'll be able to study chemistry — as all student athletes are required to take classes at the academy as well — although soccer takes some getting used to, Cory is determined to make the best of it. Buoyed by a great group of new friends including cute, talented player Oliver (Trae Robin), though she's tested throughout Louise Alston's jubilant feature Back of the Net, Cory's positive attitude goes a long way when she makes an enemy out of Tiarnie Coupland's queen bee, Edie.

While there's nothing original about TV movie veterans Alison Spuck McNeeley and Casie Tabanou's admittedly paint-by-numbers script which adheres very closely to the underdog sports movie playbook established over the last five decades of cinematic storytelling, Net stays afloat with its upbeat spirit and breakneck pace.

Planting the seeds for actual depth and/or stronger subplot potential early on, such as when we learn that Oliver's financially strapped family has been going through a tough time, unfortunately the eighty-two minute feature doesn't give moments like these the time or support needed to let them bloom. Yet although it might not win over adults who've seen so many underdog sports movies that they've gotten the mechanics of the plot down to a science, by refreshingly centering its tale on a young woman of color and hiring women behind-the-scenes to bring it to life, this girl power movie's heart is definitely in the right place.

A surprisingly effective — if ultimately underwhelming — combination of science and sport, Alston's film is sure to strike a chord with its target audience who may have seen the Australian feature on the Disney Channel before its recent DVD release. While Back of the Net doesn't manage to transcend its predictable formula, by moving as fast as a soccer ball down the field, its irrepressible enthusiasm and infectious energy is hard to deny.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://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: Giant Little Ones (2018)

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Jocks in the locker room, beautiful girls in the halls, a party while mom's away, and fights between friends.

Centered on popular high school swimmers Franky Winter (Josh Wiggins) and Ballas Kohl (Darren Mann) — two lifelong friends growing up in Ontario who have a falling out after a confusing drunken encounter on one's seventeenth birthday — at first glance, writer-director Kyle Behrman's Giant Little Ones is everything we've come to expect in a coming-of-age teen movie.

But, unafraid of silence and ambiguity and filled with hypnotic, unhurried takes which invite us to take a moment and figuratively breathe the same air that the characters do, it doesn't take us long to realize that there's so much more going on beneath the surface of this heartfelt and at times harrowing portrait of teenage sexuality than we might have imagined going in.

Refusing to pin a label on any of its main characters — besides the film's concerned parents who, played by Kyle McLachlan and Maria Bello are going through existential crises of their own — Kyle Behrman's intelligent, understated sleeper will resonate with those who've had enough of Hollywood's stereotypical whip smart, worldly teens with all the answers and are instead searching for something real.

With the artistry of a Sofia Coppola picture and potent performances by its ensemble cast, the character driven Giant is anchored by the staggering turns of leads Josh Wiggins and Darren Mann as two conflicted friends who go from brothers to enemies practically overnight, along with a moving performance by Taylor Hickson as a girl who finds herself unexpectedly caught in the middle.

Likewise, it's the type of film that's so thoughtfully conceived that even its peripheral characters feel just as fascinating and fully realized as the two at the heart of the endeavor. Intended as a film version of a pop song, Giant Little Ones is a small, tenderly crafted drama that's not only sure to stick with you but bound to take up a great space in your heart.

Text ©2019, 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)

Now Available

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.

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.

DVD Review: Breaking Brooklyn (2017)

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Encouraging his tap students to stay together, Miles Bryant (Louis Gossett Jr.) gives them an important lesson right off the bat in Breaking Brooklyn.

"Let’s sound like one family," he tells them, moments before he sees the face of homeless, twelve-year-old aspiring dancer, Aaron Davis (Colin Critchley) pressed up against the glass in order to better observe the class.

Intrigued by the boy's obvious passion for dance and perhaps seeing a little bit of himself in the young man – after his father is arrested and the car he lives in is towed away – the former Broadway legend takes in both Aaron and his rebellious older brother Albee (iCarly's Nathan Kress) rather than let them spend their holidays in foster care.

Discovering that Miles is on the verge of losing his own home above a beautiful old Bedford Stuy theater he purchased with his reclusive brother Greg (Vondie Curtis-Hall) who lives downstairs in a dressing room after an accident drove the two apart, Aaron decides to enter the upcoming Best of the Boroughs contest to help Miles keep a roof over their heads.

From training montages to the obligatory big show, while Breaking works in all of the main plot-points that dance picture fans (including yours truly) know by heart, Breaking Brooklyn has much more on its mind than showstopping tap.

The tale of two fractured families who attempt to form one over the course of a life-changing holiday, acclaimed choreographer Paul Becker tries to blend two distinctly different storylines together in his ambitious feature filmmaking debut, co-written with Rory Owen Delaney.

An earnest character driven work fueled by conflict, unfortunately as much as I enjoy watching newcomer Critchley dance, the film is far more fascinating when it skips past his slightly protracted storyline (that gets usurped by other things halfway through the movie) and instead focuses on the Bryant brothers.

Knowing that Brooklyn would be pretty quiet with them tiptoeing (or soft-shoeing) around one another, the pair's decades old rift is humored by their angelic voiced teenage granddaughter Faith (Madeleine Mantock), who lives with the two and routinely delivers meals down to Greg.

Nonetheless missing a far more organic plotline hiding in plain sight (which would be if Faith entered the contest rather than a kid they met days earlier), while the entire cast is excellent and it's easy to see why developing the relationship of a second pair of brothers has a nice symmetry to it, in a roughly one hundred minute movie, it just doesn't flow as naturally as it should.

Likewise, the decision to season the film with just enough grit to garner a PG-13 rating – instead of either toning it down enough to attract a much wider family audience or focusing more on the authenticity of life in the streets – calls far more attention to the inconsistencies in tone and dialogue than likely intended.

Roughly average but with real potential, it's still a sweetly entertaining film overall. And despite a rushed finale and rather sudden end to a big internal character conflict, thanks to some terrifically crowd-pleasing choreographic nods to Singin’ in the Rain in Aaron's first big solo dance in the theater, Brooklyn breaks just well enough to delight holiday film fans and musical lovers alike.

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.