Tag: movie review

The new movie Girls Like Girls, which is widely recommended, seems as confused as its characters are supposed to be.

Teenage Coley (Maya da Costa), who has relocated from San Diego after her mother’s death to her estranged father’s rural Oregon home, is befriended by Sonya (Myra Molloy). Their friendship soon becomes romantic and then is abruptly ended when Sonya leaves for summer dance camp, and both confront their feelings and fears, and renew their relationship, after Sonya returns.

Director Haley Kiyoko, who co-authored the screenplay with Stefanie Scott and Chloe Okuno, explains in introductory remarks that this movie originated as a song (2015) and later became a novel (2023). She also adds for those who are unfamiliar with these previous versions that it’s an account of being seen, and addresses the need for more queer stories.

Girls as a movie is successful enough. The cinematography is evocatively languid, and elicits high school summer experience. Also, Da Costa is credible even as she stops short of exploring some emotions, which seems as much a directing and writing problem.

One problem however is its relevance. Lesbian love has a long history at least in the West (e.g., Sappho’s 630-570 BCE love poems). Moreover, more than 6 in 10 Americans today still believe that gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable, and most LGBTQ Americans today report feeling socially supported.

A bigger problem is that the story seems as confused as some of its characters. The movie is considered a romantic coming-of-age story, but its plot suggests something more complicated that to its detriment is never examined.

One obvious possibility is the challenge to heterosexual expectations that Coley’s and Sonya’s relationship poses as expressed by Sonya’s sometime boyfriend Trenton (Levon Hawke). Another perhaps less so arises in the awkward exchanges between Coley and her estranged father Curtis (Zach Braff), which seem less about Coley’s sexual identity than their family history, and which reappear in the mostly off-camera interactions between Sonya and her mother and sister.

These and other possibilities offer opportunities to offer something more than saccharinely superficial sentiments about lesbian love, and explain why this story from someone whose fans consider “lesbian Jesus” seems more like an after-school special. This condition seems confirmed by my discovery after the move that the adapted song was offered as a YA novel.

This movie also represents the icult of the individual, but this constraint is part of a larger cultural immediacy complaint, and not specific to this movie. That however is only one more reason why this movie is more suitable for smaller screens, such as a music video, and not a big one as a feature film.

Fantasy Life, which is a new movie written and directed by Matthew Shear, is a more substantial story than some critics seem to think.

Sam (Shear), a law-school dropout, agrees to babysit his psychiatrist’s (Judd Hirch) granddaughters and soon thereafter finds ways to spend their mother Dianne (Amanda Peet), an unemployed actor. Dianne, who does little to discourage Sam’s attention, nonetheless ends the affair almost before it begins but uses it to needle her estranged, and increasingly inebriated, husband (Alessandro Nivola) and their parents over dinner in her parents’ summer home.

Dianne’s husband, who drives away and then crashes his car, recovers in his parents’ home, but she eventually invites him home. Dianne later encounters Sam between sessions in another psychiatrist’s office, and asks him to meet her in a nearby coffee shop after hers, and they discuss their lives and split dessert before going their separate ways.

Most credible critics seem satisfied with this movie, which some nonetheless consider “slight” or even unoriginal. I however found it perhaps more subtle and refreshing, which made it even more satisfying.

The directing and acting are accomplished enough to support this unconventional plot. Dianne, who initiated their meeting and later hears the limitations of her belief after her new psychiatrist mirrors it back to her, seems incapable of expressing herself, and retreats into the less challenging topic of Sam’s missing money. Sam for his part seems relieved that Dianne doesn’t challenge his account of his life since he left after that disastrous dinner and in return accepts Dianne’s retreat.

Both in other words recognize, and resign themselves to, unfinished realities, and neither pushes for more, which are choices only mature people, however messy, could make. Such lessons are ones many of us could learn, which is why it is a more substantial, and significant, story.

Credible critics think well of think well of Tow, but I think it’s misfocused, and thus a middling movie.

This movie tells the trust story of Amanda Ogle (Rose Byrne), a Seattle woman living in her old Toyota Camary that is stolen while she is interviewing for a job and then towed and sold. She discovers that she needs more than the court order she obtains, so she accepts the offer from a non-profit lawyer named Kevin (Dominic Sessa) and the kindness of Barb (Octavia Spencer), a homeless shelter manager, and others who are staying there, and eventually succeeds.

The predictable focus of the movie, as written by Jonathan Keasey and Brant Boivin and directed by Stephanie Laing, is Amanda’s persistence. She is called a hero near its end by a reporter who wants to write about her experiences and efforts.

This focus is reinforced by a successful ensemble, which enables Byrne to make the most of this character. It is reiterated by the apparent replacement of these actors by the people whom they’ve been portraying in a closing scene, which lasts longer than expected.

The problem is that the Amanda’s efforts are less engaging than her need for connections and community. Amanda is reluctant when her car is towed to rely upon anyone, and must learn how to trust, and be trustworthy, again.

This process starts in the shelter where Barb tells Amanda for example that her failures are familiar, and thus ones she can overcome, and where Amanda in turn mirrors this tough love to Denise (Ariana DeBose) and supports Nova (Demi Lovato), who is pregnant. Beyond the shelter, she forms semi-functional connections to her lawyer Kevin and even a tow-yard employee named Cliff (Simon Rex).

Amanda admits to others in one of the support group sessions that she is an alcoholic and an addict who cannot without her car even see her estranged daughter (Elise Fisher). This admission initiates the emotional resolution much as if not more than the successful verdict.

These moments however aren’t enough to dislodge the hero narrative at the center of this movie, which makes it messy, and not one that can ultimately hold the attention of its audience.