Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley, “Hala”) is missing. Just who she is and what happened to her quickly makes way for the impact her disappearance has upon the surrounding community, in particular to a group of soul-searching teenage girls. Joanna (Grace Smith, “Dorm Therapy” TV series) and her friends — Laurel (Kayla Carter, “I Hate LA”…
Feeling all horrored-out after your Halloween movie marathon? Don’t hang up your crucifix yet — The Shed is a bite of gory fun to keep the party bleeding. An arresting opening sequence sees a man named Bane (Frank Whaley, “Hustlers”) desperately running from a vampire. Spoiler alert: He’s caught, he’s bitten, and he stumbles —…
Over the last twenty years, the Dardenne brothers’ (“The Unknown Girl”) social realist dramas about the forgotten and the marginalized have been honored at the Cannes Film Festival with two Palme d’Ors, two Best Performance awards, one Best Screenplay award, and one Grand Prix. Their magic is still in evidence in their latest film, Young…
A high school student’s essay discussing radical philosopher Frantz Fanon’s belief in the necessity of violence by oppressed people raises certain eyebrows in Nigerian director Julius Onah’s (“The Cloverfield Paradox”) thought-provoking but over-determined Luce, a drama about race that challenges us to impose our own expectations on the main character. Onah says that, “Every other…
Recapturing old memories can be challenging, especially when the line between what really happened and what may have happened is so fragile. Like Joanna Hogg’s recent film memoir, “The Souvenir,” Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor Castillo (“Thursday Till Sunday”), in her third feature Too Late to Die Young (Tarde para morir joven), is uncertain where memory…
Two teenagers walk along the Charles Bridge in Prague, and as they do so their fingers brush and they nearly take hold of each other’s hands. Nearly, but not quite, as teen awkwardness gets in the way and they lack the maturity to express themselves. This is a tiny moment in Spider-Man: Far From Home,…
To describe Booksmart as “Superbad” with girls is to be reductive and overly simplistic. Nonetheless, it is a not inaccurate description of Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, due to its winning combination of coming of age trials and tribulations, the strains upon teenage friendship and profane humor. However, these elements are combined in such a way…
