Terrorists aren’t born. They’re made. But how? The fascinating drama You Resemble Me has some ideas. Bring a child into a poor, dysfunctional, on-the-fringes family. Have her grow up beaten and bouncing around foster care. Add in sexual abuse, and then a drift into prostitution and drugs. And then let her watch, riveted, as a […]
Author: Stephen Whitty
I’ll Find You
The movie — about a wartime romance, a wrenching separation, and a tireless quest – is called I’ll Find You. But the truly interesting discovery at its heart —at least, potentially — is the reappearance of its director. Martha Coolidge made her debut in the 1970s, when female filmmakers weren’t just criminally underrepresented – like […]
Everybody Dance
You may be tempted to cry a little at the beginning of Everybody Dance. Don’t. These young people don’t want your pity for what they can’t do. Besides, you’ll need your tears for the end – when they proudly show off what they can. A joyous celebration of art and ambition, patience and persistence, the […]
The Valet
They’re the people you don’t see. They clean your home and watch your kids. They mow your lawn and deliver your food. They’re not truly invisible, obviously. But do you ever really look them in the eye? The Valet gives one of them a starring role. Antonio is a parking attendant in Los Angeles and […]
Forbearance
Crises test our characters. But they reveal them, too. Josh and Callie Sunbury have been married for twenty-odd years, and they’ve fallen into a routine. He works a hated factory job, while trying to keep his family’s small Idaho farm afloat. She teaches at the local high school. They barely talk except to argue. And […]
Sunspot
Just how minimalist can a film get before it begins to disappear? That’s the high-stakes risk Mark Mihok seems to be taking in Sunspot, a movie which strips away all non-essentials. A few essentials too, perhaps, as it pares itself down to nearly nothing. Set in small-town New York, the film boasts a diverse cast […]
Eradication
The oddest, and perhaps longest lasting, after-effect of Covid has been the “pandemic pictures.” You know them within five minutes. Remote locations and limited sets. Small casts of characters and no crowd scenes. Lots of people talking on Zoom. They can be comedies, dramas or horror films. They can inventive, or they can be forced. […]
Love in Kilnerry
People in Kilnerry, N.H. are acting a little weird. Challenging priests to boxing matches. Throwing “swingers” parties. Going for nude bicycle rides. There must be something in the water, right? Well, actually, yes. In the new comedy Love in Kilnerry, there really is something in the water, a chemical that does away with people’s inhibitions, […]
Take the Night
Birthday revelry collides with sibling rivalry in Take the Night, a tight little noir about a prank gone wrong, The story revolves around two sets of brothers. The first pair, William and Robert, preside over a multinational import firm. The second, Chad and Todd, are scroungers, looking for an easy and not necessarily legal payday. […]
The Whole Lot
What’s it take to make a movie? What’s it cost? Connor Rickman did The Whole Lot by paring everything down to essentials – three characters, mostly long single takes, a few scenes. Absolutely nothing was wasted, no embellishments allowed. And five days, and just $15,000 later, he had a finished, professionally accomplished film. Except there’s […]
Stalker
A consumer tip for tired viewers scrolling through streaming services late at night, looking for a nasty paranoid thriller and maybe getting confused by similar titles: Watcher is about a young woman in Romania being followed by a creepy neighbor. Stalker is about a young man in Los Angeles being followed by a creepy ride-share […]
Coast
Bored teenagers, fighting with their parents, depending fiercely on each other, driving aimlessly around their California town and wondering what’s next after high school. And convinced, whatever it is, it has to be better than this. American Graffiti, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Lady Bird — it’s not a novel story. But while Coast doesn’t […]
Locked In
What makes for good drama also often makes for low-budget filmmaking. Sticking to a small cast of characters, a single setting and a confined period of time is a great way to keep your costs low. But, as playwrights going back to the ancient Greeks knew, it’s also a way to emphasize conflict, ratchet up […]
For Hannah
Most films would be better if their screenplays had gone through just one more draft. For Hannah probably could have used one fewer. The core of the movie is a gripping little wintry noir. A desperate bank robber is trying to get out of town only to have his car break down. He trudges through […]
What We Do Next
It’s a human impulse to reach out and help. But what happens when that help turns to harm? Are we obligated to then set things right? To do whatever it takes? That’s the question raised in What We Do Next, a talky but intriguing movie from writer/director Stephen Belber. After hearing the anguish of an […]
Facing Nolan
Drama is conflict. So how do you make an exciting documentary about an unconflicted man? That’s the challenge facing Bradley Jackson, the director of Facing Nolan, a non-fiction film about baseball’s living legend, Nolan Ryan. It’s not just that this is an authorized, and therefore presumably censored, autobiography. It’s that, what is there to censor? […]
Beneath the Banyan Tree
East is East, and West is West. But nothing separates people more than generations. That’s something that becomes very clear in Beneath the Banyan Tree, a lovely drama that charts the distances – geographic and emotional – that separate a Chinese grandmother, her daughter, and her grandchildren. The story begins in China where a rebellious […]
One Road to Quartzsite
Want to go off the grid? First plot a course to Quartzsite, Az. A tiny desert town, it only has a few thousand permanent residents. But it has hundreds of thousands of transients – travelers who come in by RV, van or foot and put down the thinnest of roots for a few months, as […]
Maysville
Think they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore? Maysville is proof they do. The Appalachian drama is set in the 1920s, but it might just as well have been filmed then, too. The violence is mostly offscreen. The only vaguely erotic moment comes when the leading lady goes for a midnight swim – in […]
Ghost Light
It is a tale told by several idiots, full of jokes and laughter, signifying nothing … but fun. That’s the basic description of Ghost Light, anyway, a good-humored black comedy featuring a lot of eccentric characters, a few good performers and several premature deaths. Think Knives Out meets the Bard. The idea has a group […]