2022 Tribeca Film Festival: immersive lineup announced

April 28, 2022

“Black Movement Libraries”

 The 2022 Tribeca Festival™ today announced its line-up for Tribeca Immersive, a global stage for innovation where top creators debut their latest work. Tribeca’s immersive program showcases cinematic and cutting-edge virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and participatory experiences by top artists who push the boundaries of creative and emotional storytelling.

For the first time ever, Tribeca features a thematically curated selection of experiences that address human beings’ relationship with nature and society through digital art and advanced technology. The stories blend together to generate an interconnected experience, offering festival attendees a breathtaking interactive journey.

The programming includes best-in-class experiences, including EVOLVER, a journey through the inner landscape of the human body from executive producers Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick, created by Marshmallow Laser Feast, with music by Jonny Greenwood; Please, Believe Me, an investigation of Lyme disease from Peabody Award Winner Nonny de la Peña; and Plastisapiens, an exploration of how the environment affects human evolution from Miri Chekhanovich, Édith Jorisch, and Dpt.

Three categories of immersive selections (Main Competition, New Voices, and Best of Season) are part of Tribeca this year, running from June 10-19. Main Competition projects are eligible for the juried Storyscapes Award, which honors artists who bridge the gap between technology and storytelling. In addition, Tribeca is introducing the New Voices Award for the immersive program, which is awarded to a first- or second-time XR creator that brings new perspectives and artistic languages to immersive storytelling.

For those able to join the Festival in person this year, the immersive exhibition at Spring Studios (50 Varick Street) features a selection of experiences and installations from all three categories. Outdoor immersive installations are also located at various destinations throughout New York City. For at-home audiences with access to VR headsets, immersive experiences can be accessed via a virtual exhibition at The Museum of Other Realities* – a digital extension of the in-person gallery experience, reflecting main themes from this year’s line-up.

“Tribeca Festival’s immersive programming showcases creators using the latest in technology to tell their stories,” said Casey Baltes, Vice President Tribeca Games & Immersive. “The projects we’ve curated push the boundaries of XR in both physical and digital exhibitions for audiences in New York City and around the globe.”

“Each experience presented at Tribeca’s immersive exhibition encompasses a standalone reality, represents a cause, or serves as an embassy to a world where users have agency — a chance to act: bear witness, make a statement, reach out, or simply play,” said Ana Brzezińska, Immersive Curator at Tribeca Festival. “We invite everyone to visit the virtual worlds created by artists, who take us on a meaningful journey of their vision, and tell evocative stories that demand to be told, carried in silence, or inherited through generations.

*The Museum of Other Realities is available for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index and Windows Mixed Reality users. Oculus Quest users can access using Oculus Link or the Virtual Desktop application that connects a wireless headset with a VR-ready PC.

The 2022 Tribeca Festival Immersive Line-up includes:

MAIN COMPETITION

These experiences include the best-in-class World, North American, and United States premieres from leading XR creators and studios, visual and performing artists in competition.

“Kubo Walks the City”

EVOLVER, (United Kingdom, France, United States) – World Premiere. EVOLVER is a mesmerizing virtual reality experience that celebrates our journey through life and death through the inner landscape of the human body. This musical real-time multiplayer experience invites audiences to follow oxygen’s flow deep into our bloodstream and inner branching, exploring the invisible human connection with the outside world. From Executive Producers Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick. Featuring Meredith Monk, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Howard Skempton, and music by Jonny Greenwood. 

Project Creators: Marshmallow Laser Feast, Jonny Greenwood, Meredith Monk, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Howard Skempton

Producers: Nicole Shanahan (Bia-Echo), Edward R. Pressman & Sam Pressman (Pressman Film), Terrence Malick (TF Malick Productions), Antoine Cayrol (Atlas V), Mike Jones (Marshmallow Laser Feast)

Intravene, (United Kingdom, Canada) – World Premiere. Intravene is an immersive audio experience that uses binaural 360-degree audio to plunge listeners into the heart of the overdose crisis in Vancouver, Canada. Episode 1, “Benzos,” drops listeners into a safe injection site in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where a user inadvertently injects a hit contaminated with benzos. Intravene is a groundbreaking partnership between immersive and documentary experts, and drug user activists: DARKFIELD, Crackdown, and Brenda Longfellow.

Project Creators: DARKFIELD (David Rosenberg, Glen Neath), Brenda Longfellow & Crackdown

Producers: DARKFIELD (Victoria Eyton), Crackdown

Kubo Walks The City, (France, South Korea) – North American Premiere. Seoul, 1934. Korea is under Japanese occupation. Like “ethno-detectives,” viewers follow in the footsteps of Kubo, a Korean writer, in his urban flânerie. Through caricatures that mock the shortcomings of a Korean society emerging from the poverty and archaisms of the past, explore a city recklessly discovering the modernity and prosperity that come with occupation. Directed by Hayoun Kwon and produced by Innerspace VR.

Project Creator: Hayoun Kwon

Producer:  Innerspace VR

Missing Pictures Ep. 3-5, (France, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Republic of China, Luxembourg, South Korea) – World Premiere. For every movie made, dozens of pictures remain missing forever. Missing Pictures gives directors a chance to tell a story that would otherwise never be told. Each episode invites one filmmaker to narrate some key points of the movie, why the movie is important for them, and why it was never made. Missing Pictures brings to life unmade films by Abel Ferrara, Tsai Ming-Liang, Catherine Hardwicke, Lee Myung-Se, and Naomi Kawase.

Project Creators: Clément Deneux, Joseph Beauregard

Producers: Atlas V, Arte France, BBC, PTS Taiwan, Serendipity Films, Wild Fang Films, Giioii

Mushroom Cloud NYC / RISE, (United States) – World Premiere. Mushroom Cloud NYC / RISE is a site-specific AR experience by artist Nancy Baker Cahill. Witness a mushroom cloud explode over the water and then slowly transform against the sky into a call to collective action against climate change. The NYC edition is custom geolocated for Tribeca with an accompanying original NFT video work entitled, RISE, marking the first NFT created from an XR festival experience.

Project Creator: Nancy Baker Cahill

Producer: Shaking Earth Digital

Please, Believe Me, (United States) – World Premiere. Thirty years ago, Vicki Logan was diagnosed with the recently identified Lyme Disease. When she didn’t recover with antibiotics, one doctor stood by her side while others in the medical establishment turned against Lyme patients who complained of symptoms after receiving standard treatment. This VR piece investigates Vicki’s tragic case and explores why the scientific community stopped believing patients.

Project Creator: Nonny de la Peña

Producers: Kim Cleworth, Dan Brower, Charlie Park

ReachYou, (United States, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Colombia) – World Premiere. ReachYou is an augmented reality transmission from the future built for the tenderness of the present. ReachYou comes from a future when Earth is no longer habitable. Each transmission delivers an important message, asking users to contribute their own stories and share their griefs and gratitudes, integrating you into a larger, ever-evolving Human Record.

Project Creators: Katrina Goldsaito, Jonah Goldsaito

Zanzibar: Trouble in Paradise, (United States, Tanzania) – World Premiere. This immersive holographic experience tells the story of two women who gained financial independence in a male-dominated culture through seaweed farming – an ingredient found in everything from ice cream to medicine. When climate change decimated the seaweed, their resilience and strength enabled them to pivot to growing sponges. Then climate change killed the sponges. This film illustrates the impact it has on those who are less likely to have their voices heard.

Project Creators: Ashraki Mussa Machano, Steven-Charles Jaffe

Producer:  Springbok Entertainment

NEW VOICES COMPETITION

These experiences feature 2021/2022 premieres from first- and second-time extended reality (XR) directors in competition.

“Iago: The Green-Eyed Monster”

Emerging Radiance: Honoring The Nikkei Farmers Of Bellevue, (United States) – New York Premiere. Emerging Radiance, directed by Tani Ikeda and illustrated by Michelle Kumata, celebrates the untold stories of Japanese American strawberry farmers who lived in Bellevue from 1920 to 1942. With a hand-painted mural and Spark AR Instagram filters, visitors have the opportunity to meet Toshio Ito, Rae Matsuoka Takekawa, and Mitsuko Hashiguchi, three survivors of the World War II incarceration camps, as they share in their own words their connections to the land before World War II, during incarceration, and post-World War II. Produced by Meta Open Arts.

Project Creators: Tani Ikeda, Michelle Kumata

Producer: Tamar Benzikry (Meta Open Arts)

Iago: The Green Eyed Monster, (United States, Argentina) – World Premiere. This musical prequel to a futuristic take on Shakespeare’s Othello explores the psychology and origin story of the notorious villain Iago reimagined as a woman. Reviewing holographic memories, Iago muses on her schemes in a rock opera villain song that incorporates Shakespeare’s original words into the lyrics. As her song crescendos, Iago is consumed by her jealousy and literally becomes “the green-eyed monster,” destroying everyone and everything in her path to vengeance.

Project Creators:  Mary Chieffo, Josh Nelson Youssef, Camila Marturano, Julian Dorado, Kush Mody

Producers: Juvee Productions,  3Dar, Verizon

LGBTQ + VR Museum, (United Kingdom, Denmark) – North American Premiere. LGBTQ + VR Museum is the world’s first virtual reality museum dedicated to celebrating the stories and artwork of LGBTQ people by preserving queer personal histories. The museum contains 3D scans of touching personal artifacts, from wedding shoes to a teddy bear, chosen by people in the LGBTQ community and accompanied by their stories told in their own words. The in-person version presented at Tribeca is a never-before-seen multiplayer biometric experience controlled by users’ emotions in real-time.

Project Creators: Antonia Forster, Thomas Terkildsen

Producer: Albert Millis

LIMBOTOPIA, (Taiwan, Republic of China) – World Premiere. Illusion, Karma, Apocalypse, Autism. Limbotopia is a surrealist animated VR film from first-time Taiwanese director Hsieh Wen-Yee. Based on the architectural design of Limbotopia, the experience takes you on a dream-like journey through a mysterious city. When a real location in Taiwan disappears due to the environmental crisis, the physical city reemerges on the other side.

Project Creator: Wen-Yee Hsieh, Chun-Lien Cheng

Producer: Wen-Yee Hsieh

Mescaform Hill: The Missing Five, (Canada, US) – World Premiere. When several policemen disappear in an African town, a Road Safety cadet attempts to prove himself by investigating against his superior’s orders but discovers far more than he expected. Mescaform Hill: The Missing Five is a VR animated graphic novel created for the Oculus platform by Edward Madojemu.

Project Creators:  Edward Madojemu, Adam Madojemu

Producer: Ryan Genji Thomas (Meta)

Planet City VR, (China, United States) – International Premiere. Planet City VR is set in a fictional city of 10 billion people⁠ — the entire population of earth⁠. The world has succumbed to global-scale wilderness and surrendered its stolen lands. The city’s creation story, narrated by a young climate activist and one of the city’s first citizens, is an extraordinary tale of tomorrow and an urgent examination of the environmental questions facing us today.

Project Creator: Liam Young

Producers:  Well Played Studios (Elliot Ordower),  HTC Vive Arts

Plastisapiens, (Canada, Israel) – World Premiere. Platisapiens is a surrealist work of eco-fiction, an invitation to explore human influences on the environment, and, inversely, an exploration of how the environment affects human evolution. This speculative, playful, and ironic piece imagines a future where plastic and organic life merge to create a new life form. Viewers will journey back into prehistory to discover that they share the same origins as plastic until they finally mutate into Plastisapiens, and discover the Plastosphere.

Project Creators: Miri Chekhanovich, Édith Jorisch, Dpt.

Producers: NFB (Marie-Pier Gauthier, Isabelle Repelin), Dpt. (Raphaëlle Sleurs),  Lalibela Productions

The Black Movement Library – Movement Portraits, (United States) – World Premiere. The Black Movement Library-Movement Portraits serve as a way to learn about the lives of performers contributing their movement data to the Black Movement Library, taking viewers on a journey through each portrait. What happens when we ritualize the archival process of data collection and invite the community as a witness? Using motion capture and Unreal Engine, performers send their movement data to be translated into visuals in real-time.

Project Creator: LaJuné McMillian

Producers: Brooklyn Public Library, National Endowment for the Arts, Sundance Institute, The Andy Warhol Foundation For Visual Arts, Jerome Foundation, Times Square Arts, Bitforms Gallery and Movement Lab Barnard

This Is Not A Ceremony, (Canada) – New York Premiere. Witness an unforgettable cinematic VR experience, guided with care and kindness by tricksters, matriarchs, and buffalo, as they confront the darker sides of life in Canada while Indigenous. This is Not a Ceremony calls on all who’ve watched to bear witness, and share what they’ve seen and heard—and to never forget.

Project Creator: Ahnahktsipiitaa (Colin Van Loon)

Producer: NFB (Dana Dansereau)

BEST OF SEASON

These selections include the best immersive experiences presented in 2021.

Container (South Africa) – New York Premiere. Positioned at the intersection of virtual reality and installation art, Container takes viewers on an ever-transforming journey, beginning at Clifton Beach, Cape Town, where lie the graves of the 221 enslaved men and women who drowned in shackles when a slave ship sank in 1794. Through a mix of documentary and constructed reality, viewers are taken on an unknown journey into the world of products and people.

Project Creator:  Simon Wood, Meghna Singh

Producers:  Ingrid Kopp, Steven Markovitz, Caitlin Robinson

End of Night, (Denmark) – North American Premiere. 1943. You are sitting in a boat with Josef. He is rowing from Nazi-occupied Denmark to safety in neutral Sweden. As the boat crosses the ocean, the sea gives way to the streets and the people that inhabit his mind. Your journey together becomes a living landscape of the painful recollections from the night of his escape. As dawn draws near, you will witness the trauma of his escape and the grueling choices that those on the run make in order to survive.

Project Creator:  David Adler

Producers: MAKROPOL (Mikkel Skov, Mads Damsbo)

Exhibition A, (United States) – New York Premiere. A love letter to women of color written in virtual reality, Exhibition A showcases talent fromthe POC, immigrant, non-binary, LGBTQ, and Black communities in Portland, Maine to benefit Coded by Young Women of Color (CYWOC). Play as glittering avatars amidst intimate performances, including Veeva Banga’s Afrobeats Dance, “Kiwi Drip” performed by Adrienne Mack-Davis and Felicia Cruz, spoken word from Portland’s Poet Laureate Maya Williams,

“Diamonds” by JanaeSound, and interactive 3D design by Nick Hall/Tripdragon.

Project Creator: Nick Hall, Janay Woodruff

Producers: Yarn Corporation (Sam Mateosian), Janay Woodruff

Glimpse, (Ireland, United Kingdom, France) – North American Premiere. Glimpse is an animated interactive VR experience starring Taron Egerton and Lucy Boynton, directed by Academy Award® winning Writer and Director Benjamin Cleary and VR Creator Michael O’Connor. A highly emotive, visual feast, Glimpse is set in the imaginative mind of a heartbroken panda and illustrator, Herbie, who has recently broken up with his deer girlfriend, Rice. Through Herbie’s art, viewers delve back through the memories of their relationship.

Project Creators: Benjamin Cleary, Michael O’Connor

Producers: Michael O’Connor, Raphael Penasa, Lee Harris

In addition to Festival Laurels, winners of the Main Competition and New Voices awards will receive artwork by a comic illustrator and cover artist from AWA (Artists, Writers & Artisans).

As previously announced, the Tribeca Festival kicks off on June 8 with the world premiere of HALFTIME, a Netflix documentary by director and Tribeca alum Amanda Micheli that follows global superstar Jennifer Lopez, as she reflects on her milestones and evolution as an artist. Tribeca 2022 closes on June 18 with the world premiere of Loudmouth, a documentary written and directed by Josh Alexander that puts a disruptive spotlight on Reverend Al Sharpton, who has been at the center of the national conversation around race since the late 1980s.Other Festival highlights include the mid-season premiere of the final season of AMC’s Better Call Saul with Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, Giancarlo Esposito, and Jonathan Banks; the world premiere of Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby, a feature documentary from director Karam Gill about Lil Baby’s transformational journey from local Atlanta hustler to one of hip-hop’s biggest stars and pop culture’s most important voices for change, followed by a special performance; live world premiere and conversation with the cast and creators of USG Audio’s The End Up, a podcast series about a tilted near-future where terminal cancer patients who wish to end their suffering must attend a weeklong boot camp starring Himesh Patel, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Merritt Wever, and John Reynolds; and a special live playthrough of interactive thriller Immortality by renowned video game writer and designer Sam Barlow.

As previously announced, the Tribeca Festival kicks off on June 8 with the world premiere of Halftime, a Netflix documentary by director and Tribeca alum Amanda Micheli that follows global superstar Jennifer Lopez, as she reflects on her milestones and evolution as an artist. Tribeca 2022 closes on June 18 with the world premiere of Loudmouth, a documentary written and directed by Josh Alexander that puts a disruptive spotlight on Reverend Al Sharpton, who has been at the center of the national conversation around race since the late 1980s.

Other Festival highlights include the mid-season premiere of the final season of AMC’s Better Call Saul with Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, Giancarlo Esposito, and Jonathan Banks; the world premiere of Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby, a feature documentary from director Karam Gill about Lil Baby’s transformational journey from local Atlanta hustler to one of hip-hop’s biggest stars and pop culture’s most important voices for change, followed by a special performance; and live world premiere and conversation with the cast and creators of USG Audio’s The End Up, a podcast series about a tilted near-future where terminal cancer patients who wish to end their suffering must attend a weeklong boot camp starring Himesh Patel, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Merritt Wever, and John Reynolds.For the latest updates on programming for the 2022 Tribeca Festival, follow @Tribeca on TwitterInstagramFacebookYouTube, and LinkedIn or visit tribecafilm.com/festival and sign up for the official Tribeca newsletter.

Passes and Tickets for the 2022 Tribeca Festival
Festival passes are on sale now at tribecafilm.com/festival/tickets. Sessions, both virtual and in-person, may be reserved at tribecafilm.com/immersive starting May 2, 2022.

Press Credentials
Media interested in covering the festival may submit a press credential application on Tribeca’s press site. The deadline to apply is Friday, May 6, 2022.

About the Tribeca Festival
The Tribeca Festival brings artists and diverse audiences together to celebrate storytelling in all its forms, including film, TV, VR, gaming, music, and online work. With strong roots in independent film, Tribeca is a platform for creative expression and immersive entertainment. Tribeca champions emerging and established voices; discovers award-winning filmmakers and creators; curates innovative experiences; and introduces new technology and ideas through premieres, exhibitions, talks, and live performances.

The Festival was founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in 2001 to spur the economic and cultural revitalization of lower Manhattan following the attacks on the World Trade Center. Tribeca will celebrate its 21st year from June 8–19, 2022.

In 2019, James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems, a private investment company with locations in New York and Mumbai, bought a majority stake in Tribeca Enterprises, bringing together Rosenthal, De Niro, and Murdoch to grow the enterprise.

About the 2022 Tribeca Festival Partners
The 2022 Tribeca Festival is supported by our partners: AT&T, Audible, Bayer’s One a Day, Bloomberg Philanthropies, CHANEL, City National Bank, Diageo, DoorDash, Indeed, Meta, NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, and Spring Studios New York.

Review: ‘Until We Meet Again’ (2022), starring Janel Parrish and Jackson Rathbone

April 27, 2022

by Carla Hay

Janel Parrish and Jackson Rathbone in “Until We Meet Again” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Pictures)

“Until We Meet Again” (2022)

Directed by Pece Dingo

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the dramatic film “Until We Meet Again” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with a few Asians and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A singer/songwriter moves into a haunted mansion, where she falls in love with the ghost of the famous pianist who used to live there. 

Culture Audience: “Until We Meet Again” will appeal primarily to people interested in watching morbid and wretchedly made ghost romance movies.

Leslie Jordan, Antonio Fargas and Janel Parrish in “Until We Meet Again” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Pictures)

It would be a disservice to call “Until We Meet Again” a “train wreck,” because train wrecks get people’s attention and need energy to exist. “Until We Meet Again” is just lethargic mush about a creepy romance between a male ghost and a desperate woman. Aside from the morbid aspects of this terrible movie, “Until We Meet Again” fails to be entertaining on any level whatsoever. Everyone involved in making “Until We Meet Again” should be embarrassed, but this garbage movie is such a flop, hardly anyone will see it.

Written and directed by Pece Dingo, “Until We Meet Again” (which takes place in Los Angeles) also has an awkwardly matched cast that lacks realistic chemistry with each other. The cast members in “Until We Meet Again” just recite their lines, with no credible emotional connection to their characters. The characters that are supposed to have relationships with each other never look convincing as people in relationships, whether they are supposed to be friends or lovers.

Lisa Wagner (played by Janel Parrish) is a 21-year-old pop singer/songwriter, who’s struggling to make it big in the very competitive music industry. The most she’s been able to accomplish is to get occasional gigs at small nightclubs. In the beginning of the movie, she’s part of a musical duo with her guitarist boyfriend Shane (played by Justin Gaston), who soon becomes her ex-boyfriend.

While Shane and Lisa are doing a very unimpressive and bland performance on stage, Lisa notices that Shane and a woman in the audience are lustfully looking at each other. After the show, Lisa sees Shane and this mystery woman (played by Erin Boehme) kissing each other passionately in a car in the nightclub’s parking lot. That’s the end of Lisa’s relationship with Shane, who pops back up occasionally in the movie to harass Lisa to get back together with him. Lisa refuses.

After this breakup, an emotionally wounded Lisa ends up housesitting at a Hollywood Hills mansion for an unnamed period of time. Details on who owns the mansion are never fully explained. Lisa vaguely mentions that she answered an online ad to housesit for a woman whom Lisa does not know. There are many unexplained and sloppily written aspects of “Until We Meet Again.”

Getting to live in this mansion is one of the few bright spots in Lisa’s life. Another bright spot is her best friend Tiffany (played by LeToya Luckett), who is the first person Lisa invites over to the house to show where she is currently living. Lisa says if it weren’t for this housesitting job, she would never have been able to afford to live in a place like this mansion. As an added perk for Lisa, the house has a grand piano that Lisa will play several times during the course of the movie.

Lisa tells Tiffany, who’s also single, that although Lisa was upset by Shane’s infidelity and having to break up with him, Lisa says she was never really in love with Shane, so it was probably all for the best that she and Shane are no longer a couple. To celebrate Lisa’s new living situation, Lisa and Tiffany smoke some synthetic marijuana (also known as spice) together. This drug activity is something that will be a factor later in the story when Lisa calls the police after she thinks a ghost in the mansion is stalking her.

On her first night in the house, Lisa sees a mouse and predictably screams. The next day, she sees the mouse again, so she calls an exterminator service. Two elderly men show up at her door. Their names are Louie (played by Antonio Fargas) and Angel (played by Leslie Jordan), who say they are “pest eradicators.”

Angel, who is feisty and sarcastic, seems to be the one in charge. Louie is more laid-back than Angel, but he and Angel seem to get on each other’s nerves. They also have an odd way of inspecting the house for animal pests. Louie uses a doctor’s stethoscope to listen to the walls, while Angel takes notes on a clipboard.

Louie announces to Lisa: “You’ve got a big rodent problem here ma’am. ” Angel then chimes in, “I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t handle.” Louie and Angel then start bickering with each each other. Lisa overhears Angel tell someone in the room, “There’s nothing for you here, except to bother the girl.”

If all of this sounds like a very dull scene, that’s because it is, but it’s intended to be one of the movie’s comedic moments, because Louie and Angel are supposed to be the “comic relief” characters. Viewers should actually dread seeing Louie and Angel in a scene because these two characters are painfully unfunny. The dialogue throughout this movie is simply empty and horrendous.

As an example of how this movie is badly written, Lisa never bothers to get details on what kind of extermination these two miserable clowns are supposed to be doing before they leave the house. Of course, it’s easy to figure out from the strange way that Louie and Angel are acting, they’re not really exterminators. (Angel’s name is a big, glaring clue that this dimwitted movie serves up with no subtlety.)

Lisa soon finds out that she’s got a bigger problem in the house than a random mouse: The house is haunted by a mopey ghost named Eddie Conway (played by Jackson Rathbone), a famous pianist who died in 1969, at the age of 20. Lisa first sees Eddie sitting at the end of her bed before he disappears. Lisa doesn’t know who he is at first, but she eventually finds out his identity. She not only discovers that Eddie used to live in this mansion but she also finds out something about his past love life that leads to a very cringeworthy part of the movie.

The first time that Lisa sees Eddie, she’s shocked and frightened. A panicked Lisa calls the police to report an intruder. The cops who show up to take the report are Detective Morrison (played by Michael Madsen) and Detective Yamamoto (played by Anzu Lawson), who don’t find anything suspicious and can’t do anything to help Lisa except take her statement. Detective Morrison is more skeptical than Detective Yamamoto.

Lisa encounters these two cops multiple times when she calls the police after seeing Eddie in her home again. And each time, the police get more suspicious that Lisa is hallucinating, because they think she’s on drugs and/or mentally ill. It doesn’t help when Detective Morrison finds Lisa’s stash of spice, which she promptly denies is hers.

In between these “ghost encounters” with Eddie and Lisa, “Until We Meet Again” has some tedious scenes of Lisa trying to get a record deal. The more she sees Eddie and the more she gets to know him (they eventually start talking to each other), the more she starts to fall for him and vice versa. And you can almost do a countdown to the scene where Eddie and Lisa start writing songs together.

Angel and Louie show up from time to time (much to Eddie’s displeasure), because Angel and Louie are on a mission to get Eddie to go somewhere with them. Eddie likes hanging out at the house, and he doesn’t want to leave. And besides, he’s got a romance going on with a living, breathing human being.

Shouldn’t Angel and Louie know the silly romance movie rule by now that a mismatched couple in love cannot be stopped? In a nonsensical movie like “Until We Meet Again,” that means Eddie and Lisa have got to find a way to make this love connection work between a ghost and a human who’s still alive. The rest of “Until We Meet Again” pummels viewers with this attitude: “So what if someone in this couple is literally dead? Is there a law against having sex with a ghost? Take that, Detective Morrison!”

By falling in love with each other, Lisa and Eddie are supposed to find happiness from the heartbreak they had before they met each other. It’s all handled in a way that’s not only off-putting but also incredibly slow-paced and dreary. Eddie and Lisa’s ghost/living person romance isn’t the only thing that looks fake. The characters of Eddie and Lisa do not look like their stated ages in the movie. Rathbone (wearing ashy white makeup) and Parrish are supposed to be portraying people in their early 20s, but Rathbone and Parrish look a least 10 years older than that.

Simply put: Everything about “Until We Meet Again” is a misfire. The direction is amateurish, the screenplay is horrible, the acting is weak and sometimes unwatchable. The only good thing to say about this odious movie is it’s such a turnoff, there’s no chance that there will be a sequel.

1091 Pictures released “Until We Meet Again” on digital and VOD on February 15, 2022.

Review: ‘Barbarians’ (2022), starring Iwan Rheon and Catalina Sandino Moreno

April 27, 2022

by Carla Hay

Iwan Rheon and Catalina Sandino Moreno in “Barbarians” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

“Barbarians” (2022)

Directed by Charles Dorfman

Culture Representation: Taking place in Surrey, England, the horror film “Barbarians” features a cast of nearly all-white characters (with one Latina) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: Four people who are gathered for a dinner party have their party interrupted by home invaders. 

Culture Audience: “Barbarians” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching an unimaginative and dull horror movie that has too many boring conversations and not enough scares.

Pictured clockwise, from left: Tom Cullen, Iwan Rheon, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Inès Spiridonov in “Barbarians” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films/IFC Midnight)

“Barbarians” is being marketed as a horror movie about a home invasion. It’s actually a tedious 90-minute movie about an annoying dinner party, with the formulaic home invasion happening only in the last 30 minutes. There’s no good excuse for why the movie drags on and on in showing nothing but the dinner party hosts and their relationship issues before and during this dreadfully boring dinner party. It all just comes down to a horror movie being lazy and unimaginative.

Written and directed by Charles Dorfman, “Barbarians” (which takes place during a 24-hour period in Surrey, England) wastes a lot of time showing the movie’s central couple’s relationship conflicts and some background about the home that they have recently purchased. Adam Davies (played by Iwan Rheon) is a movie director who’s frustrated because his career has stalled. His partner Eva Velasquez (played by Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a world-renowned artist whose specialty is making large sculptures. Adam and Eva, who are both in their late 30s to early 40s, are not married and have been together for an untold number of years.

Adam and Eva have recently moved into a housing property development called The Gateway, which has been designed to be a progressive community of homes for like-minded creative people and other “hipsters.” A massive stone sculpture made by Eva is at the center of the property. It’s an avant-garde eyesore that’s being touted as “bespoke sculpture.”

Real-estate developer Lucas Hunt (played by Tom Cullen) has sold Adam and Eva a house in The Gateway. Lucas hopes to sell more housing units, so he has made a promotional video that he has posted on the Internet. The opening scene of “Barbarians” is a clip from this slick promotional video, where Lucas has the tone of an infomercial hack.

In this video, Lucas talks about how The Gateway got its name from a famous stone on the land called Gaeta (which is Gaelic for “gateway”), which has “attracted people far and wide with its mystery, its magic, its power. They come to celebrate the solstice as a way of marking the transition from one season to another.” Eva’s sculpture adorning the property is meant to resemble the Gaeta stone. Lucas mentions that the land where The Gateway is located had been owned for generations by a family with the last name Wickes.

Lucas says in the video that he worked out a deal with the Wickes family to sell the property to him, by assuring the family that for this land “steeped in history,” he would be “respecting its past to create something truly special.” As if to prove that he had the Wickes family’s blessing, the video includes Lucas posing for a photo with family patriarch Alan Wickes (played by Kevin Ryan) and Alan’s three sons: John (played by Will Kemp), Dan (played by Connor Swindells) and Neil (played by Tommy McDonnell). Everyone is smiling and seeming to be on good terms with other.

There’s a pointless part of the movie about a wounded fox that Adam finds outside on the property, because the fox got caught in some fence wire. When Adam approaches the fox to try to help it, the fox snarls and snaps at him, so Adam backs off. Later, the fox mysteriously shows up on the kitchen floor in Adam and Eva’s house.

Dan Wickes just happens to be there, and he covers the wounded fox with a jacket and kills it with no hesitation. The killing of this fox really has no bearing on the story, except to show that Dan can get violent (even in a “mercy killing” of an animal), and Adam feels emasculated in his own home because Dan acted in a “macho” way to kill the fox. Adam also thinks that Dan flirts inappropriately with Eva, but she denies it.

Adam’s birthday happens around the same time that he and Eva have moved into their new home, so Adam and Eva are throwing a small dinner party to celebrate. Their only guests at this party are Lucas and his actress girlfriend Chloe (played by Inès Spiridonov), who has been in a relationship with Lucas for an unnamed period of time. “Barbarians” (which is writer/director Dorfman’s feature-film directorial debut) is a poorly made movie that skips over a lot of character development. All four of these characters come across as very shallow and often self-absorbed, with unremarkable acting from all of the movie’s cast members.

The main thing that viewers will learn about Adam and Eva before this dinner party happens is that Eva wants to start a family with Adam, who is more reluctant about the idea of being a parent at this point in his life. Adam seems to want to wait until he has a more stable income. Eva is frustrated by his hesitation, so she tells Adam that if he’s not ready to have a family with her, he needs to be up front and tell her. Adam says he’s sorry and tells Eva that he’s committed to her and will go with what she wants.

The dinner party is just more irksome relationship drama, with Adam and Lucas acting like immature rivals. Adam feels like an insecure “beta male” because he thinks “alpha male” Lucas is trying to make flirtatious moves on Eva. That seems to be a pattern of jealousy that Adam has when another man is interacting with Eva. Lucas thinks Adam is kind of a wimp. Lucas tells Adam to hit Lucas. Adam doesn’t punch Lucas but slaps him instead, so Lucas calls Adam a “pussy.”

And it should come as no surprise that some secrets, lies and betrayals are revealed during this dinner party. The identities of the home invaders (who wear animal skull masks) and the reason for the home invasion are so obvious, this movie has no real suspense or mystery. By the time the horribly staged home invasion happens during the dinner party, viewers will feel like “Barbarians” invited people to a horror movie, but instead offered a time-wasting void of monotonous and forgettable drivel.

IFC Films/IFC Midnight released “Barbarians” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on April 1, 2022.

Review: ‘The Contractor’ (2022), starring Chris Pine

April 26, 2022

by Carla Hay

Chris Pine in “The Contractor” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

“The Contractor” (2022)

Directed by Tarik Saleh

Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States and in Berlin, the action film “The Contractor” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with some African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A former Green Beret takes a mercenary job as a private contractor, and he finds himself at going against orders and being hunted by his former colleagues. 

Culture Audience: “The Contractor” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Chris Pine and anyone who likes formulaic “shoot ’em up” movies.

Gillian Jacobs and Chris Pine in “The Contractor” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

“The Contractor” is as generic and dull as its title, with an over-used action-movie plot of a bitter military veteran who goes rogue. Throw in some ‘daddy issues,’ sloppy editing and a drab Chris Pine—and that sums up this soulless film. It’s also got an awkward mix of trying to be gritty and sentimental, often in the wrong places.

Directed by Tarik Saleh and written by J.P. Davis, “The Contractor” (formerly titled “Violence of Action”) is being marketed as an action thriller, but any “action” or “thrills” are utterly predictable and don’t really come until the last half of the movie. The first half of the movie is a dreary slog showing what led to James Harper (played by Pine) going from being a Green Beret to joining a shady mercenary operation as a private contractor. James is living in the shadow of his father Mason, a high-ranking U.S. military officer who expected James from an early age to also go into the military.

In the beginning of “The Contractor,” James has been estranged from his father for years, for reasons that remain vague. However, flashbacks and conversations reveal that Mason (played by Dean Ashton) was an overly demanding and emotionally abusive father during James’ childhood. The movie starts off with James as a U.S. Army Special Forces Sergeant first class, also known as a Green Beret. James is also a war veteran, and he sustained injuries during his war duties. James is currently stationed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Now seemingly recovered from his injuries, James is due to go before a board of military decision makers who will determine if he will be reinstated as a Green Beret. However, James has a secret: Because he’s desperate to be in the type of physical shape where he can be re-instated, James has been illegally taking human growth hormones through needle injections.

The U.S. Army finds out when James tests positive for these drugs. He is honorably discharged, but as punishment, he won’t be getting his military pension or insurance benefits. It comes at a very bad time, because James and his homemaker wife Brianne (played by Gillian Jacobs) are heavily in debt and getting dangerously close to going bankrupt. They’re so financially broke, they’re behind on their utility bills. When debt collectors call, James just ignores the phone calls.

In addition to having a financial strain on their marriage, James and Brianne have grown emotionally distant from each other. Brianne and James have a shy and introverted son named Jack (played by Sander Thomas), who is about 8 or 9 years old and the couple’s only child. Because James has spent a long time away from home, Jack is bashful around James, but James wants to be a loving and attentive father, so he makes an effort to get closer to his son, by doing things such as teaching Jack to swim in a public pool.

Not long after getting the bad news about his military discharge, James finds out that his father has died. This death seems to trigger some strange behavior in James, in obvious indications that he has unresolved issues with his father. For example, Brianne finds James doing repairs on their house’s roof in the middle of the night. When Brianne wants an explanation, James says defensively to her: “I’m not my father.”

And in cliché-ridden tripe such as “The Contractor,” that means you’re going to see some hazy-looking flashback scenes of James as child of about 10 or 11 years old (played by Toby Dixon) and James’ father Mason, who was a stereotypical stern and macho military type. As seen in flashbacks, Mason was the type of father who expected James to be tough from a very early age. He even forced a pre-teen Mason to get a tattoo at a tattoo parlor, even though it’s illegal for tattoo parlors to give tattoos to people under the age of 18.

At his father’s funeral, James reconnects with his former military best friend Mike (played by Ben Foster), who is happily married to a woman named Christine (played by Tyner Rushing), who likes and respects James too. Mike and Christine have two children: Mike Jr. (played by Nicolas Noblitt), who’s about 10 or 11 years old, and Kelly (played by Eva Ursescu), who’s about 12 or 13 years old. When James goes to Mike’s house for dinner, Brianne is not with him, which is another indication of the cracks in their marriage.

During this visit at Mike’s house, James confides in Mike about his financial problems. Mike tells James that if James is interested in private contractor work, Mike can easily help James get a contractor job that pays $350,000. It’s an offer that’s too tempting to refuse, and James desperately needs the money, so he says yes. This “private contractor” work is really mercenary-for-hire work, usually done by ex-military people, for secretive employers who want to keep these “black ops” jobs as confidential as possible.

Brianne isn’t too pleased about this decision, especially since James promised her that he would never do this type of work. James has already made up his mind though, and there’s nothing Brianne can do to stop him. James’ family life then gets mostly sidelined, as the rest of the movie is about his private contractor job.

James’ supervisor in this job is a rough and jaded character named Rusty (played by Kiefer Sutherland), who says that James will get $50,000 up front as payment, and the remaining $300,000 after the job is completed. To launder his money, Rusty owns a company that imports and exports coffee.

Rusty knows that James is taking this job because James was essentially ousted from the U.S. military. Rusty tells James: “I was you. That’s why we started our own tribe.” Rusty also warns James about the ruthless mercenaries he will encounter in the job. “The stink of those guys, they will rub off on you.”

It’s an assignment that will take James, Mike and some other people on this black-ops team to Berlin. The other members of the team include a cunning operative named Katia (played by Nina Hoss) and a muscle-bound brute named Kauffman (played by Florian Munteanu). Later, James meets a mysterious recluse named Virgil (played by Eddie Marsan), who might or might not be helpful to James.

In Berlin, this black-ops group has been tasked with hunting down a 42-year-old man named Salim Mohsin (played by Fares Fares), a retired professor of virology who used to work at Humboldt University in Berlin. Salim is doing privately funded research, and he’s suspected of being involved in bioterrorism, because he is developing a poisonous gas that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction.

Salim’s research is being funded by Farak Ojjeh, the founder of El Sawa, a charity with known links to Al Qaeda in Syria. Salim and his wife Sophie (played by Amira Casar) have a 9-year-old son named Olivier (played by Tudor Velio) and a 7-year-old son named Yanis (played by Aristou Meehan). And predictably, this family will be caught up in some way in whatever dirty dealings happen in the movie.

Things happen during this mission that don’t sit right with James, so he decides to not follow orders. It leads to James and Mike going on the run from their colleagues, with double-crossings and shootouts in the mix. The action scenes aren’t impressive. And too much of the action has clunky editing, thereby making some of the chase scenes look very phony.

It all just leads to a very formulaic conclusion, where the people who die and those who survive are too easy to predict. All of the cast members just seem to be going through the motions in the action scenes. The only attempt at some emotional depth is in the underdeveloped family scenes near the beginning of the film.

“The Contractor” has all the cinematic resonance of a mediocre video game. That might be enough to entertain some viewers watching a movie with talented cast members who deserve better material. Everyone else can skip “The Contractor,” because they won’t be missing out on anything meaningful.

Paramount Pictures released “The Contractor” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on April 1, 2022. The movie is set for release on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on June 7, 2022.

2022 Tribeca Film Festival: games lineup announced

April 26, 2022

“A Plague Tale Requiem”

The 2022 Tribeca Festival™ today unveiled its official Games selections, which celebrate the convergence of games, entertainment, and culture. This year’s lineup features nine titles that demonstrate phenomenal storytelling, art, and innovation through interactive experiences. Each selection will vie for the Tribeca Games Award, which honors an unreleased game for its excellence in art and storytelling through design, artistic mastery, and highly immersive worlds.

The games program features the world premieres of Immortality, an interactive trilogy in which players can explore the legend of Marissa Marcel, a film star who disappeared, through her work; OXENFREE II: Lost Signals, the mind-bending follow up to the critically acclaimed narrative adventure OXENFREE, from Night School Studio; and Cuphead – The Delicious Last Course, another helping of classic Cuphead action with new weapons, magical charms, and more.

“This year’s selections represent the incredible range of how games prove to be a powerful form of storytelling,” said Vice President of Tribeca Games and Immersive Casey Baltes. “We’re continuing to expand how audiences and players interact with games, not only as entertainment but as one of the most impactful cultural mediums.

In 2021, Tribeca Festival featured its first ever Official Selections for Games, including Ember Lab’s visually stunning Kena: Bridge of Spirits; Luis Antonio’s interactive thriller Twelve Minutes, starring James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe; and the inaugural Tribeca Games Award winner, NORCO, which was praised by critics upon its release in March 2022 for its brilliant, narrative-rich experience.

From June 11-19, the Tribeca Festival once again offers digital experiences for global audiences powered by Parsec. Those able to join the Festival in person this year will be the first to experience a playable Games Gallery featuring demos, art, and artifacts for this year’s selections, hosted at Tribeca Festival’s hub, Spring Studios (50 Varick Street).

Additionally, the Tribeca Games Spotlight, an online showcase of this year’s official selections, features never-before-seen footage and interviews from the creators of the official sections as part of the Summer Game Fest — a free, all-digital global celebration of video games streaming online. Games fans across the globe can tune in on June 10 at 3pm EDT via Tribeca’s website, major streaming platforms, and summergamefest.com.

The 2022 Tribeca Festival Games Official Selections are as follows:

American Arcadia, (Spain, Greece, Brazil) – World Premiere. Welcome to Arcadia! A 70s retro-futuristic metropolis where all of its citizens enjoy a life of luxury and comfort… unaware that they’re being broadcast live 24/7! Arcadia is not an ordinary city, but the most-watched reality show on the planet—where a drop in popularity ratings comes at the highest cost: death. Uncover the truth and escape with your life from a televised utopia in Out of the Blue’s brand new puzzle platformer game.
Developer: Out of the Blue Studios
Publisher: Raw Fury

As Dusk Falls, (United Kingdom) – World Premiere. As Dusk Falls is an original interactive drama from INTERIOR/NIGHT that explores the entangled lives of two families across thirty years in small-town Arizona. Starting with a robbery-gone-wrong, the choices you make will have a powerful impact on the characters’ lives in this story of betrayal, sacrifice, and resilience.
Developer: INTERIOR/NIGHT
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios

The Cub, (Serbia, United States, Poland) – World Premiere. Welcome to Earth after The Great Climate Catastrophe, where only the ultra-rich managed to evacuate to Mars. Decades have passed and those on Mars venture back to Earth to collect specimens like a safari hunt. As the Cub, a mutant orphan immune to the toxins that killed off most of humanity, players will be relentlessly hunted by a science expedition and must run to safety amongst the ruins of Earth. Featuring an original soundtrack program, Radio Nostalgia from Mars.
Developer: Demagog Studio
Publisher: Untold Tales

Cuphead – The Delicious Last Course, (Canada, United States) – World Premiere. Another helping of classic Cuphead action awaits you in Cuphead – The Delicious Last Course. Brothers Cuphead and Mugman are joined by the clever, adventurous Ms. Chalice for a rollicking adventure on a previously undiscovered Inkwell Isle. With the aid of new weapons, magical charms, and Ms. Chalice’s unique abilities, assist the jolly Chef Saltbaker and take on a new cast of fearsome, larger-than-life bosses in Cuphead’s final challenging quest.
Developer and Publisher: Studio MDHR

Immortality, (United States) – World Premiere. Marissa Marcel was a film star. She made three movies. But none of the movies were ever released. And then Marissa Marcel disappeared. After discovering rare footage from her three lost movies — Ambrosio (1968), Minsky (1970) and Two of Everything (1999) — award-winning Game Director Sam Barlow (Her Story, Telling Lies) has assembled an interactive trilogy in which players can explore the legend of Marissa Marcel through her work.
Developer and Publisher: Half Mermaid

OXENFREE II: Lost Signals, (United States) – World Premiere. OXENFREE II: Lost Signals is the mind-bending follow-up to the critically-acclaimed narrative adventure game OXENFREE from Night School Studio. In the small coastal town of Camena, unnaturally occurring electromagnetic waves are causing interference with electrical and radio equipment. Reluctantly, Riley Poverly returns to her hometown to investigate the mystery. What she finds is more than she bargained for.
Developer: Night School Studio
Publisher: Netflix

A Plague Tale: Requiem, (France) – World Premiere. This direct sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence follows Amicia and her brother Hugo on a heartrending journey into a breathtaking, brutal medieval world twisted by supernatural forces as they discover the cost of saving loved ones in a desperate struggle for survival. Strike from the shadows or unleash hell, and overcome foes and challenges with a variety of weapons, tools, and unearthly powers. A Plague Tale: Requiem will be released in 2022 on consoles and PC.
Developer: Asobo Studio
Publisher: Focus Entertainment

Thirsty Suitors, (United States) – World Premiere. Jala is a young woman returning home for her sister’s wedding and confronting her past. With wildly varied gameplay, Jala will fight skate punks, random suitors, and ultimately, her exes, in the ultimate battle to heal old hurts and ignite new truths, bringing Jala closer to understanding what she wants from her future. Can she learn to love herself and heal the wounds of her past?
Developer: Outerloop Games
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive

Venba, (Canada) – World Premiere. Venba is a narrative cooking game centered around an Indian mom who immigrates to Canada with her family in the 1980s. Players will cook various dishes, restore lost recipes, engage in branching conversations, and explore a story about family, love, loss, and more.
Developer: Visai Games

In addition to Festival Laurels, the winner of the Tribeca Games Award will receive artwork by a comic illustrator and cover artist from AWA (Artists, Writers & Artisans).

As previously announced, the Tribeca Festival kicks off on June 8 with the world premiere of Halftime, a Netflix documentary by director and Tribeca alum Amanda Micheli that follows global superstar Jennifer Lopez, as she reflects on her milestones and evolution as an artist. Tribeca 2022 closes on June 18 with the world premiere of Loudmouth, a documentary written and directed by Josh Alexander that puts a disruptive spotlight on Reverend Al Sharpton, who has been at the center of the national conversation around race since the late 1980s.

Other Festival highlights include the mid-season premiere of the final season of AMC’s Better Call Saul with Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, Giancarlo Esposito, and Jonathan Banks; the world premiere of Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby, a feature documentary from director Karam Gill about Lil Baby’s transformational journey from local Atlanta hustler to one of hip-hop’s biggest stars and pop culture’s most important voices for change, followed by a special performance; and live world premiere and conversation with the cast and creators of USG Audio’s The End Up, a podcast series about a tilted near-future where terminal cancer patients who wish to end their suffering must attend a weeklong boot camp starring Himesh Patel, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Merritt Wever, and John Reynolds. For the latest updates on programming for the 2022 Tribeca Festival, follow @Tribeca on TwitterInstagramFacebookYouTube, and LinkedIn or visit tribecafilm.com/festival and sign up for the official Tribeca newsletter.

About the Tribeca Festival
The Tribeca Festival brings artists and diverse audiences together to celebrate storytelling in all its forms, including film, TV, VR, gaming, music, and online work. With strong roots in independent film, Tribeca is a platform for creative expression and immersive entertainment. Tribeca champions emerging and established voices; discovers award-winning filmmakers and creators; curates innovative experiences; and introduces new technology and ideas through premieres, exhibitions, talks, and live performances.

The Festival was founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in 2001 to spur the economic and cultural revitalization of lower Manhattan following the attacks on the World Trade Center. Tribeca will celebrate its 21st year from June 8–19, 2022.

In 2019, James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems, a private investment company with locations in New York and Mumbai, bought a majority stake in Tribeca Enterprises, bringing together Rosenthal, De Niro, and Murdoch to grow the enterprise.

About the 2022 Tribeca Festival Partners
The 2022 Tribeca Festival is supported by our partners: AT&T, Audible, Bayer’s One a Day, Bloomberg Philanthropies, CHANEL, City National Bank, Diageo, DoorDash, Indeed, Meta, NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, and Spring Studios New York.

Review: ‘You Are Not My Mother,’ starring Hazel Doupe, Carolyn Bracken, Ingrid Craigie and Paul Reid

April 25, 2022

by Carla Hay

Carolyn Bracken in “You Are Not My Mother” (Photo by Cait Fahey/Magnet Releasing)

“You Are Not My Mother”

Directed by Kate Dolan

Culture Representation: Taking place in North Dublin, the horror film “You Are Not My Mother” features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: After a single mother mysteriously vanishes for a few days, she comes back to her home and seems to be a strange and different person, and her teenage daughter begins to wonder if this mother is possessed by something evil. 

Culture Audience: “You Are Not My Mother” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in predictable but effective horror movies about the supernatural.

Hazel Doupe and Ingrid Craigie in “You Are Not My Mother” (Photo by Cait Fahey/Magnet Releasing)

“You Are Not My Mother” has a mystery that’s very easy to solve, but this well-acted horror movie adeptly maintains suspense in a story influenced by Irish folklore. It’s a solid feature-film directorial debut from Kate Dolan, who also wrote “You Are Not My Mother.” The movie should satisfy people who like supernatural thrillers that can be frightful but don’t wallow in a lot of bloody gore. “You Are Not My Mother” had its world premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.

In “You Are Not My Mother” (which takes place in North Dublin), teenager Char Delaney (played by Hazel Doupe) is an introverted loner who attends an all-girls Catholic school. Char is about 15 or 16 years old. Char lives with her single mother Angela Delaney (played by Carolyn Bracken), Angela’s brother Aaron (played by Paul Reid), and Char’s grandmother Rita (played by Ingrid Craigie), who is the mother of Angela and Aaron. Char’s biological father is not seen or mentioned in the move.

“You Are Not My Mother” opens with a scene in the woods, where a baby (played by Dante Woods) is being taken by Rita, who lights a circular fire around the baby. The baby then apparently burns to death. Why would Rita do such a horrible thing? By opening the movie with this scene, writer/director Dolan foreshadows too much of the movie too early. Within the first 10 minutes of the film, it’s obvious that Char’s family has secrets that will eventually be revealed.

Angela has had a long history of depression. In the beginning of the movie, her depression is so debilitating, she is frequently bedridden. One day, Char asks her grandmother Rita for money to take a bus back home from school. Rita says in response: “Why don’t you ask your mother? I’ll get her out of bed.”

Angela manages to get out of bed, and she gives Char a ride to school. However, Angela seems so distracted, Angela almost hits a horse on the road with her car. Meanwhile, Char says, “Mum, we need food in the house. Mum, what’s wrong with you?”

Angela, who seems exhausted and sad, replies: “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do this anymore.” When Char comes home from school, her mother isn’t there. Later, Char finds her mother’s car abandoned in a field, with a bag of groceries left on the front passenger seat. Angela is nowhere in sight.

Angela’s concerned family eventually contacts the local police to report her missing. Aaron is very concerned that Angela could’ve been kidnapped. A policewoman named Officer Jenny (played Aoife Spratt) has come to the home to take the missing person report. Aaron gets impatient and angry when it’s suggested that, because of Angela’s history of depression, she might have left to go somewhere on her own for a while. Later, Char has a nightmare about finding her mother dead.

When Char’s mother goes missing, it’s just another stress in Char’s life. At school, she is bullied by a group of “mean girls,” led by a snooty brat named Suzanne O’Connell (played by Jordanne Jones), who has her own mother issues that are later revealed in the story. Two of the other girls in this “mean girls” clique are named Kelly (played by Katie White) and Amanda (played by Florence Adebambo), and they later participate with Suzanne in a very cruel prank on Char.

In one of the movie’s classroom scenes, Char is first seen having to interact with Suzanne, who reacts with annoyance when art teacher Ms. Devlin (played Jade Jordan) tells Suzanne to sit next to Char. When the teacher isn’t looking, Suzanne takes some gum out of her mouth and smears the gum on Char’s notes. Char is considered an outcast at this school because she comes from a working-class family who is considered a little strange.

Later in the art class, Char shows Ms. Devlin a drawing that Char made of shadows engulfed in flames. Char tells the teacher that she made the illustration from a dream that she had. It’s a very cliché and obvious clue in the movie.

Another clue is when after Angela goes missing, Rita gives Char a small ball of twigs and leaves, while saying, “I made this for you—for protection.” Why does Char need to be protected? Could it have anything to do with that apparent birthmark on her face?

At any rate, Angela eventually returns to the home after a few days, with no explanation of where she went and why. However, Char and the other family members notice that Angela is not the same person she was before Angela disappeared. This new Angela is more energetic and in better spirits. She even starts doing things like cheerfully making dinner. It’s close to Halloween, so the meal includes pumpkin.

But this new Angela now has a loss of appetite. And this mother, who was once so listless that she could barely get out of bed, is now enthusiastically talking about taking a mother-daughter trip with Char. It’s an idea that Aaron vehemently opposes.

“You Are Not My Mother” is much more of a psychological horror film than a movie that relies on a lot of action-packed jump scares. There are some moments that are meant to induce terror, but a lot of the horror is about what can’t be seen rather than the story being about a killer on the loose. This movie could’ve benefited from more character development, but “You Are Not My Mother” also doesn’t clutter the movie with a lot of unnecessary scenes.

All of the cast members give reasonably authentic performances, but the horror merits of “You Are Not My Mother” are mostly in Bracken’s eerie transformation as Angela. Without this unsettling performance, “You Are Not My Mother” would just be an average or laughable horror movie if mishandled by someone who was miscast in the Angela role. (Fun fact: Writer/director Dolan appears briefly in the movie in the role of a pharmacist.) “You Are Not My Mother” is not a going to be considered a classic horror movie, but it delivers plenty of intrigue for horror fans who are looking for a thriller that explores issues of generational trauma and family burdens.

Magnet Releasing released “You Are Not My Mother” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on March 25, 2022.

Review: ‘Badhaai Do,’ starring Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar

April 25, 2022

by Carla Hay

Rajkummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar in “Badhaai Do” (Photo courtesy of Zee Studios)

“Badhaai Do”

Directed by Harshavardhan Kulkarni

Hindi with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in India, the comedy/drama film “Badhaai Do” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A gay man and a lesbian, who are both in the closet about their sexualities, decide to get married to each other to throw off suspicion from their families, but complications ensue when they both meet real love partners. 

Culture Audience: “Badhaai Do” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in stories of how LGBTQ people live in India, where homophobia is encouraged and practiced by much of society.

Chum Darang, Bhumi Pednekar and Rajkummar Rao in “Badhaai Do” (Photo courtesy of Zee Studios)

“Badhaai Do” is a rare LGBTQ Bollywood film that achieves a balancing act of comedy and drama. It’s about the damage caused by homophobia and the courage it takes to live authentically. The main cast members’ charismatic performances make this movie a winner. It’s a story that’s both sobering and heartwarming.

Directed by Harshavardhan Kulkarnia, “Badhaai Do” (which translates to “Felicitations Due” in English) is a witty, often-sarcastic and engaging film that has a brisk pace that doesn’t make it seem like the movie is really two hours and 27 minutes long, even though it is. Kulkarnia co-wrote the “Badhaai Do” screenplay with Suman Adhikary and Akshat Ghildial. There are some parts of the movie that have a heightened tone of a screwball comedy, but the movie does not veer too far off from reality, except for the expected Bollywood musical interludes where the characters begin singing and dancing to their dialogue.

In “Badhaai Do” (which takes place in an unnamed city in India), a gay man and a lesbian get married to each other, because they’re hiding their true sexualities from almost everyone they know, including their families who have been pressuring them to have heterosexual marriages. The two people in this closeted couple are police officer Shardul Thakur (played by Rajkummar Rao) and physical education teacher Suman “Sumi” Singh (played by Bhumi Pednekar), who are both in their early 30s.

Shardul comes from a large family of women, including his unnamed widowed mother (played by Sheeba Chaddha), who are all pressuring him to get married to a woman. As expected, Shardul’s female relatives have also been playing matchmaker by trying to set him up with women whom they think could be a suitable wife for Shardul. He pretends that he’s interested, even though he knows that he’s not sexually attracted to women.

Sumi was once engaged to a man, who died six years ago in a tragic accident. She hasn’t had a serious boyfriend since then, but her conservative parents Prem Singh (played by Nitesh Pandey) and his wife Mrs. Singh (played by Loveleen Mishra) are expressing concerns to Sumi that she hasn’t moved on and found someone else to marry. Sumi and her brother Naman Singh (played by Vyom Yadav), who is 10 years younger than she is, still live with their parents. Naman has a bratty and sexist attitude about Sumi being an unmarried woman at her age, and he often makes snide comments to her about her marital status.

Even though Sumi can’t bring home any women she dates, Sumi still tries to find a love partner. She has been talking to someone on a lesbian dating app. But when she meets this possible love interest in person, she finds out that it’s really a young man, who tries to get Sumi to date him.

Sumi refuses to date him, so he starts harassing her and threatens to tell her family and friends that she’s a lesbian. Sumi is a feisty person who’s not afraid to stand up for herself, so she goes to the police to report this harassment. It’s how Sumi ends up meeting Shardul, who takes the report. It’s also how he finds out that Sumi is a lesbian. Shardul gets rid of the harasser by smacking him around—not bad enough where medical treatment is needed, but enough to scare away the harasser.

At work, Shardul is so fearful about revealing that he’s gay, he overcompensates by saying homophobic things. For example, early in the movie, Shardul and a police co-worker are in a local park when they catch two men who are about to be in a compromising sexual situation. Shardul and his colleague interrupt this tryst before things go further and tell the men to leave. Shardul makes a big show of expressing disgust with gay people, as if to say, “I’m not one of them!”

It just so happens that Sumi is nearby in the park at the same time. Shardul sees her sitting on a park bench by herself and strikes up a conversation with her. They end up talking about how their families are pressuring them to get married. And so, Shardul then confesses to Sumi that he’s gay and in the closet.

Shardul suggests to Sumi that they pretend to date each other and then get married, in order to “get our families off of our backs.” Shardul also says that he and Sumi can live like roommates. And because Shardul is a police officer, he tells Sumi that he can probably protect her better than most other people could.

Sumi is skeptical about this idea at first, but she eventually agrees. Shardul and Sumi’s short “courtship” soon turns to marriage. The movie’s wedding predictably has the most elaborate musical scenes in “Badhaai Do.”

But there are some big problems to living this lie of a phony marriage. Around the time that Sumi and Shardul concoct their fake romance, Sumi meets and begins dating Rimjhim Jongkey (played by Chum Darang), a confident woman who works as a hospital employee who processes lab samples. (The movie has some scatalogical comedy because Rimjhim deals with stool samples. Sumi meets Rimjihm because Sumi dropped of her own stool sample at the hospital.)

Sumi and Rimjhim have an instant mutual attraction, they begin dating, and they end up falling in love with each other. Rimjhim knows almost from the beginning that Sumi is pretending to be in a romance with Shardul. Rimjhim doesn’t really approve of this deception, but she goes along with it because she understands what’s at stake: Sumi’s family could disown Sumi if they found out that she’s a lesbian. (None of this spoiler information, because it’s in the movie’s trailer.)

Rimjhim lives openly as a lesbian/queer woman because she says that she doesn’t have any family members living in India. If she did, Rimjhim says that she would probably have to hide her true sexuality too. After Shardul and Sumi get married and move in together, Rimjhim spends so much time in their apartment, she essentially starts living there too.

If anyone notices that Rimjhim has spent the night at the apartment, Shardul tells people he knows that Rimjhim is Sumi’s cousin, while Sumi tells people she knows that Rimjhim is Shardul’s cousin. It’s a flimsy lie that’s bound to unravel if people who know Shardul and Sumi start talking to each other about Rimjhim.

As for Shardul’s real love life, his is more complicated than Sumi’s. When Shardul and Sumi met, he was already in a long-distance romance with a man who’s about 10 years younger: a graduate business student named Kabir (played by Deepak Aurora), who might not have the same feelings for Shardul that Shardul has for him. Kabir meets up with Shardul (at Shardul’s invitation) at the resort where Shardul and Sumi are having their “honeymoon.”

Soap-opera-styled drama ensues, as well as some hilarity when Shardul and Sumi desperately try to fool their family through staged photos that Shardul and Sumi are on a romantic vacation together. More backstory about Shardul’s love life is revealed which somewhat explains the patterns of mistakes he makes in his relationships. And then, things get more complicated when Shardul meets and has a mutual attraction to an attorney named Guru Narayan (played by Gulshan Devaiah), who is an obvious better match for Shardul than Kabir.

During this fake marriage, Shardul and Sumi sometimes clash with each other over certain issues. One of those issues is about parenting. Sumi says she has always wanted to be a mother, and she’s thinking about adopting a child. Shardul is adamant that he’s not ready to become a parent. Sumi accuses Shardul of being selfish and immature. Shardul accuses Sumi of being demanding and unreasonable.

They also bring some emotional baggage to the relationship. Although Sumi wasn’t romantically in love with her fiancé who died, she loved him as a friend. And so, Sumi is still dealing with grief over his death. Shardul has some unresolved issues with how his first big love affair ended and why it’s affected his fear to live openly as a gay man.

The movie’s plot has a few twists and turns, some of which are more expected than others. Rao and Pednekar give admirable performances that will make audiences root for Sumi and Shardul in the highs and lows of their unconventional relationship. (The realistic homophobia shown in the movie is heartbreaking, but it’s balanced out with moments of LGBTQ pride and self-confidence.) “Badhaai Do” shows in exemplary ways that no matter what people’s sexualities are, everyone deserves a chance to be happy, wherever they can find their personal joy that doesn’t hurt anyone else.

Zee Studios released “Badhaai Do” in select U.S. cinemas on February 11, 2022, the same date that the movie was released in several other countries, including India, Australia, Singapore, France and Ireland. “Badhaai Do” is also available on Netflix.

Review: ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin II,’ starring Jing Wu and Jackson Yee

April 24, 2022

by Carla Hay

Jing Wu, Zhu Yawen and Jackson Yee in “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” (Photo courtesy of CMC Pictures)

“The Battle at Lake Changjin II”

Directed by Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark and Dante Lam

Mandarin, Korean and English with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Korea, China, Japan and the United States, in December 1950, the action film “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” features a mostly Asian cast of characters (with some white people) representing military people and politicians involved in the Korean War.

Culture Clash: Two bickering brothers, who are in the China-based People’s Liberation Army, have various battles with each other and military enemies during the Korean War against the United States. 

Culture Audience: “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in violent war movies with amateurish dialogue and stereotypical characters that don’t have much that’s interesting to say.

Steven John Venn in “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” (Photo courtesy of CMC Pictures)

“The Battle at Lake Changjin II” should have the more accurate title of “The Battle at Lake Changjin: The Deleted Scenes.” That’s because this cash-grab war movie isn’t a true sequel but just a series of scenes that could’ve been in the first movie. And the first movie wasn’t even that great in the first place. And even though “The Battle at Lake Changjin” (which is nearly three hours long) and its sequel “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” (which has a total running time of about two-and-half-hours) are both over-indulgent messes, just because “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” has a shorter time length doesn’t make it better than its predecessor. “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” is worse.

“The Battle at Lake Changjin II” has a nearly identical storyline as its predecessor, because the movie has the same production team as 2021’s “The Battle at Lake Changjin.” Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark and Dante Lam directed both movies, while both screenplays were written by Lan Xiaolong and Huang Jianxin. In both movies, the Chinese military group People’s Liberation Army fights against the U.S. military during the Korean War’s Battle at the Chosin Reservoir.

The Army’s 7th Company is led by a courageous and respected commander Wu Qianli (played by Wu Jing), who has a 19-year-old brother named Wu Wanli (played by Jackson Yee) in the company. Wanli enlisted in the Army against Qianli’s wishes. Also returning from the original “Battle at Lake Changjin” movie are the 7th Company’s political instructor Mei Sheng (played by Zhu Yawen), fire platoon leader Yu Congrong (payed by Li Chen), artillery platoon leader Lei Suisheng (played by Hu Jun) and sniper Ping He (played by Elvis Han). Because this is a war movie, not everyone makes it out alive.

And once again, the chief villains of the story are U.S. Marines Major General Oliver P. Smith (played by John F. Cruz) and U.S. Army Commander Douglas MacArthur (played by James Filbird). “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” adds some more American leaders who weren’t in the “The Battle at Lake Changjin.” U.S. president Harry Truman (played by Ben Z Orenstein) appears briefly in a few scenes. Truman, who is depicted as someone who tried to reign in MacArthur, utters this line in one of the scenes: “MacArthur needs to be reminded that no man is bigger than this war.” Lieutenant Colonial Wilber Colbert (played by Steven John Venn) is a stereotype of a ruthless American military leader who thinks Americans are better than anyone else.

This inferior sequel does a few things differently with the characters in the movie, compared to “The Battle at Lake Changjin.” A wounded 7th Company battalion commander named Yang Wenjang (played by Geng Le) gets a little bit of a backstory. Wenjang has a flashback to his life before he was in the war, when he’s seen with his girlfriend. But that barely counts as character development, which is mostly non-existent in this movie.

“The Battle at Lake Changjin II” (also titled “Water Gate Bridge”) has even more over-the-top battle scenes than in “The Battle at Lake Changjin.” Some of the Chinese soldiers almost seem to have superhuman powers, based on the way they can do eye-popping leaps and kicks in the air, where they look like action stuntmen, not realistic soldiers. And sometimes, they’re literally on fire doing it, as there’s more than one sequence where soldiers who are burning up in flames still get things done.

Even though “The Battle at Lake Changjin” and “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” (which were both filmed during the same time period) are among the most expensively produced movies in China’s history, many of the visual effects look cheap and tacky, and the stunts often look sloppy. “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” is even more incoherent than its predecessor.

It isn’t until the last 15 minutes of this three-hour schlockfest that “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” tries to bring some grief-stricken humanity to the story, to show the realistic emotional traumas of war. But by then, it’s too little, too late. The last scene in the movie is overly sentimental and looks very forced, because the sappy tone is very off-balance from the rest of the callous violence film. This final scene looks like it belongs in a completely different movie but was dropped in “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” as a manipulative attempt to get viewers to cry.

The directors of “The Battle at Lake Changjin” movies have said that it’s possible that a six-hour directors’ cut could be released. Two to three hours of watching one of these films is more than enough time wasted. If you just want to turn your brain off and watch shootouts and explosions with mindless dialogue and forgettable characters, then “The Battle at Lake Changjin” movies are for you. If you care about watching more meaningful and authentic movies about real-life wars, your time is better spent on any number of higher-quality choices.

CMC Pictures released “The Battle at Lake Changjin II” in select U.S. cinemas on February 11, 2022. The movie was released in China on February 1, 2022.

Review: ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin,’ starring Jing Wu and Jackson Yee

April 24, 2022

by Carla Hay

Jackson Yee and Jing Wu in “The Battle at Lake Changjin” (Photo courtesy of CMC Pictures)

“The Battle at Lake Changjin”

Directed by Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark and Dante Lam

Mandarin, Korean and English with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Korea and briefly in China from June to December 1950, the action film “The Battle at Lake Changjin” features a mostly Asian cast of characters (with some white people) representing military people and politicians involved in the Korean War.

Culture Clash: Two bickering brothers, who are in the China-based People’s Liberation Army, have various battles with each other and military enemies during the Korean War against the United States. 

Culture Audience: “The Battle at Lake Changjin” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in violent war movies with amateurish dialogue and stereotypical characters that don’t have much that’s interesting to say.

James Filbird in “The Battle at Lake Changjin” (Photo courtesy of CMC Pictures)

“The Battle at Lake Changjin” is a very bloated war movie filled with simplistic dialogue, poorly written characters and tedious fight scenes. This repetitive depiction of a crucial battle in the Korean War does not earn its nearly three-hour running time. The film portrays China’s military group the People’s Liberation Army fighting against the U.S. military during the Korean War’s Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. Because it’s a scripted movie with some fictional characters, don’t expect it to be entirely accurate to real history.

If you only want to see war movies that have a certain agenda and care more about expensive-looking battle scenes than crafting a well-made war story, then “The Battle at Lake Changjin” might be for you. If you prefer to watch a war movie that places more importance on showing repetitive explosions and violent deaths than placing importance on audiences getting to know the main characters, then “The Battle at Lake Changjin” might be for you. For everyone else, it’s a mind-numbing slog that just looks like a video game with a big movie budget.

“The Battle at Lake Changjin” (directed by Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark and Dante Lam) is reportedly one of the most expensively made Chinese movies of all time, with a production budget of $200 million. Most of that money looks like it went into the bombastic battle scenes that pull out every visual-effects trick in the book to make the explosions, battlefield shootouts and killings look very over-the-top. Unfortunately, hardly any of the movie’s budget seems to have been invested in quality screenwriting or acting. The movie’s screenplay (written by Lan Xiaolong and Huang Jianxin) is simply abysmal, while the acting is mediocre at best.

“The Battle at Lake Changjin” attempts to have some meaningful family drama, by having the movie’s two central characters as brothers who often disagree with each other. Older brother Wu Qianli (played by Wu Jing) is commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s 7th Company, where is considered a a respected war hero. However, Qianli bears the burden and guilt over the war death of his older brother Wu Baili, who was killed in combat.

Qianli’s 19-year-old brother Wu Wanli (played by Jackson Yee) admires his older brother Qianli. However, the two brothers clash because Wanli wants to join the People’s Liberation Army, but Qianli doesn’t want that to happen, mainly out of fear that he doesn’t want to lose another family member in war combat. Wanli doesn’t see it that way, because he thinks that Qianli views him as inferior and not brave enough to fight in a war. Therefore, Wanli feels insulted.

Not surprisingly, Wanli ends up secretly joining the Army, much to Qianli’s disapproval. Qianli tells Wanli that he won’t get any special treatment, just because they are brothers. In fact, Qianli goes out of his way to not give Wanli any help or advice, even when other members of the Army bully and tease Wanli because they think Wanli will get nepotism perks. A lot of people in this army doubt that babyfaced Wanli has what it takes to be a tough soldier.

Wanli remains steadfast in his commitment to the Army. And slowsly but surely, he starts to gain respect from his Army peers and Wanli. These supporting characters in the 7th Company aren’t given enough depth in their personalities or development in their story arcs. They include political instructor Mei Sheng (played by Zhu Yawen), fire platoon leader Yu Congrong (payed by Li Chen), artillery platoon leader Lei Suisheng (played by Hu Jun) and sniper Ping He (played by Elvis Han).

Wanli’s first friend in the 7th Company is a fellow teen soldier named Zhang Xiaoshan (played by Shi Pengyuan) young soldier of the 7th Company who befriends Wanli. There’s also a sublot about how one of the People’s Liberation Army also includes Mao Anying (played by Huang Xuan), the eldest son of then-Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong (played by Tang Guoqiang), also known as Chairman Mao, who allowed Anying to join the war with some reluctance. People who know Chinese history already know what Anying’s fate was.

Military officials in this movie are depicted as broad caricatures with hollow personalities that just recite forgettable lines. One of these side characters is Peng Dehuai (played by Zhou Xiaobin), People’s Volunteer Army commander and People’s Revolutionary Military vice chairman. The movie gives the worst jingoistic dialogue to American military officials such as U.S. Marines Major General Oliver P. Smith (played by John F. Cruz) and U.S. Army Commander Douglas MacArthur (played by James Filbird), who’s depicted as a robotic warmonger, who’s often wearing sunglasses and chomping on a pipe.

“The Battle at Lake Changjin” gives very amateurish re-enactments of what behind-the-scenes war strategies might have been. The filmmakers seem to think that throwing in a lot of explosions and gunfire, in addition to showing men constantly shouting at each other, are enough to make a compelling war movie. It’s not. “The Battle at Lake Changjin” is an onslaught of very staged and very loud scenes of destruction that turn into a mishmash of mayhem until its very predictable conclusion.

CMC Pictures released “The Battle at Lang Changjin” in select U.S. cinemas on November 19, 2021. The movie was released in China on September 30, 2021.

Review: ‘Petite Maman,’ starring Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse and Stéphane Varupenne

April 23, 2022

by Carla Hay

Joséphine Sanz and Gabrielle Sanz in “Petite Maman” (Photo courtesy of Lilies Films/Neon)

“Petite Maman”

Directed by Céline Sciamma

French with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in France, the dramatic film “Petite Maman” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An 8-year-old girl meets another girl of the same age who is eerily similar to her.

Culture Audience: “Petite Maman” will appeal primarily to people are interested in unique movies about families and time travel.

Nina Meurisse and Joséphine Sanz in “Petite Maman” (Photo courtesy of Lilies Films/Neon)

The very memorable drama “Petite Maman” takes an insightful and endearing look at parent-child relationships and how personalities are formed in childhood. It also depicts the rhetorical question: “What would you do if you met one of your parents as a child but didn’t know it right away?” The results are fascinating, charming and often sentimental without being mawkish.

Written and directed by Céline Sciamma, “Petite Maman” clocks in at a brisk 72 minutes, which is really all the time needed for this engaging cinematic story to be told. “Petite Maman” (which takes place in an unnamed city in France) made the rounds at several top film festivals in 2021, including the Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Sciamma has made a name for herself as a filmmaker who does female-centric movies about authentic personal relationships. “Petite Maman” (which translates to “Little Mother” in English) is Sciamma’s first movie where the central female characters are pre-teen girls.

“Petite Maman” is a movie with a relatively small cast of characters (less than 10 people have speaking lines), because it’s a fairly simple story that’s rich in detailing the meaningful experiences of an 8-year-old girl who meets her mother when her mother was also 8 years old. There’s no elaborate science-fiction explanation for this time-traveling experience. Observant viewers will figure out the mystery fairly early on in the story, but it’s a delight to watch the unwitting girl discover what her mother was like at her own age.

In the beginning of “Petite Maman,” 8-year-old Nelly (played by Joséphine Sanz) is visiting a nursing home where her maternal grandmother, who was a widow, has passed away. Nelly asks her unnamed mother (played by Nina Meurisse) if she can keep a stick that used to be owned by Nelly’s grandmother. Nelly’s mother says yes.

Nelly then accompanies her parents to the house where Nelly’s grandmother used to live. It’s also the childhood home of Nelly’s mother. The house (which is located in a wooded area) is going to be sold, and most of it is already packed up, except for some essential furniture, most of it wrapped up in sheets. The kitchen is the only room in the house that looks like it hasn’t been packed up or wrapped yet in the process of the house getting a new owner.

Nelly’s mother and Nelly’s father (played by Stéphane Varupenne) have stopped by the house for some final moving arrangements. They decide to stay in the house for a few days. Nelly sleeps in the bedroom that her mother had a child. When Nelly’s mother tucks her in before Nelly goes to sleep, she mentions to Nelly that when she was a child, she didn’t like being in the room at night.

It’s soon revealed that although Nelly is a fairly obedient child, she’s more of a “daddy’s girl.” Nelly is more likely to get into disagreements with her mother, who has an unspoken air of sadness and regret about her. Nelly’s parents also don’t like to talk about their childhoods very much. Nelly’s father explains that the only thing they like to discuss about their childhoods is the Christmas presents that they received when they were kids.

But one thing that Nelly knows about her mother’s childhood is that her mother had a special hut that she built in the woods. This hut was her place where she could go when she wanted private time to herself. One of the first things that Nelly asks her mother about when they arrive at the house is: “Mom, where was your hut? Can you show me? I want to make one.”

Nelly’s mother seems too distracted with grief to grant this request. However, one day, Nelly is out walking in the woods when she sees a girl who looks exactly like her making a hut out of tree branches. The girl, whose name is Marion (played by Gabrielle Sanz, the identical twin of Joséphine Sanz), asks Nelly for help in building the hut. Nelly notices that Marion has the same name as Nelly’s mother.

It’s the beginning of a friendship where Nelly develops a deeper understanding of Marion and her childhood. Viewers find out that Marion grew up with a mother who was very overprotective. In her childhood, Marion had an operation to correct a problem that she might have inherited from her mother. Marion’s mother (played by Margot Abascal), who walks with a cane, is shown in a scene where she’s scolding Marion for playing outside because it’s against doctor’s orders.

“Petite Maman” has a plot twist revealed at the end of the movie that is emotionally poignant, especially for people who feel that this story of friendship within a family is relatable on some level. Sciamma’s telling of this story is at times whimsical but always genuinely observant of the nuances in how people relate to each other as children and as adults. The casting of identical twins Joséphine Sanz and Gabrielle Sanz (who are both very good in their respective roles as Nelly and Marion) is an inspired choice because it makes viewers pay more attention to how to tell these girls apart, in terms of their personalities.

“Petite Maman” also touches on the issue of what friendship can mean between a parent and a child. Parents of underage children often have to show or tell their kids, “I’m your parent, not your friend,” in order to set discipline boundaries. What “Petite Maman” does in a special and creative way is show that every parent’s inner child is never really lost but becomes part of who that person is as a parent and a possible friend.

Neon released “Petite Maman” in select U.S. cinemas on April 22, 2022, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on May 6, 2022. The movie was released in several European countries and in South Korea in 2021.

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