Okay fine, perhaps these specific archetypes aren’t the most representative of high school life, but the intertwining stories and use of scenery provide for interesting social situations for the growth of these characters to unfold in one night. I was trying to explore this disconnect where, even though we’re all aware of the risks of staying in a stranger’s home, we still do it. The female-oriented stories are more sexually nebulous, but more socially potent: the skinny, pig-tailed Claudia (Amanda Bauer) gets invited to a popular bitch’s sleepover, then stumbles into evidence that the host has been sleeping with her boyfriend; the pierced lip, cropped-haired blondie Maggie (Claire Sloma) courts an older boy with whom she shared a brief encounter at a pool, eventually revealing to him her hidden talents and self-defeating impulsiveness.Franco allows this wealth of backstory to arise naturally, and he has a mighty command of silence as a measurement of emotional aftershock, in the wake of careless or mean-spirited comments, and as a precursor to rationalizing reckless actions. This bodily monotony is underscored by the seeming epidemic of pensive calmness that the entire population of the tiny town seems to have agreed upon as a coping mechanism for angst.Perhaps as a result of her attempting to avoid all matter of clichés, not just of genre, Amy Seimetz revels in vagueness.I wanted to write the film with Joe because his main strengths lie in characters and relationships. I’ve obviously always known that she’s an incredible actress, but when I was in a position where I was watching her intently for five straight weeks, I realized that she’s one of the best. And so, essentially, there are no egos on set and the main rule is the best idea wins, no matter who it’s coming from. After Scott arrives at a college in Ann Arbor with the hopes of recapturing the attention of his twin loves, the three of them make a Godardian dash through a college campus with endearing jump cuts.
Federal courts allow audio but not video recording, so for the latter the filmmakers substitute minimally animated illustrations, inspired by courtroom sketches but rendered in much more stylized fashion—expressively shaded and, for some reason, dominated by autumnal hues.Marjane Satrapi’s film could have benefited from the tangy humor and cynicism of her graphic novels.We first meet Alice (Penelope Wilton), a reclusive author and scholar, in her dotage, bristling at unwanted visitors to her seaside cottage in Kent.
The ease of this self-erasure, or self-modification, suggests instability, for which the film’s communicable death fear is in part a metaphor.The way the film tells it, fame came easy for the Curies. Years later, this figure ties together Tomaz’s recurring dreams of his time during the war with his experiences in England, after a fire devastates the home where he and other migrant workers are squatting. With this cast, however, most everybody was able to execute a starry-eyed child going through the motions very subtly without ever having to ham it up. As both the dream story of Tomaz’s past and the horror story of his present progress, their relationship to one another inverts intriguingly, as the oneiric memories of the forest outpost crash down into the gritty realities of wartime abuses, and his life with Magda begins to follow a more nightmarish logic.This also means that the cast often appears precociously taciturn, much like the Cracker Jack pubescents in John Updike’s short stories. Pointedly, we also learn that Josh has a history of violence. Of course not, but it’s still visually stimulating enough to have you put such glorified youth fantasy aside and listen to what’s actually being said.However, the film isn’t without it’s problems. It’s a sensation perhaps best described by Waller himself about the 1518 dancing pandemic: “The minds of the choreomaniacs were drawn inwards, tossed about on the violent seas of their deepest fears.”The Best Games of 2020 (So Far)A limitation on the film’s project is that the sexiest part of a civil rights attorney’s job—delivering soaring speeches about right and wrong to impassive figures dressed in the black robes of authority—isn’t accessible to cameras. Mitchell was graced with a dynamo cast of no name kids that really seem to get it. Add that with a lack of flow or focus and you get this constant juggling of characters that either shifts too much or doesn’t shift enough.Much of that accreditation goes to the carefully constructed characters and the situations they hit along the way.