Film Gate Reviews: January 2023

Monday, January 30, 2023

An even-keeled film about achieving your dreams.

True Spirit is the true story of Jessica Watson (Teagan Croft) a 16-year-old girl who sailed solo non-stop around the world. The story has a nice flow and nice pace to it. Throwing us right into the middle of a storm, in what turns out to be a test run, is a fast introduction to a our lead character. A very determined girl, but also a little stubborn, who may be in over her head.		2023 Directed by: Sarah Spillane Screenplay by: Rebecca Banner, Cathy Randall, Sarah Spillane Starring: Teagan Croft, Anna Paquin

Way too long and drawn out, missing all the fun.

18 Pages is the romantic drama about a young woman with a lost diary and the man who finds it two years later and is instantly drawn to this unknown woman. It’s an intriguing premise with the potential to be both romantic and interesting. But it ends up playing out in a long-drawn story with illogical characters and completely conflicting tones.		2022 Directed by: Palnati Surya Pratap Screenplay by: Sukumar, Srikanth Vissa Starring: Nikhil Siddharth, Anupama Parameswaran

So much dysfunction, so little comedy.

The Price of Family is an Italian dysfunctional family comedy, but it’s a real struggle to see where the comedy is in the dysfunction. Two empty nesters are distraught when their adult children move out of their family home and get jobs. The kids don’t come home for the funeral of an old distant relative and all hell breaks loose (this is a slight exaggeration on my part, but their reactions are far from normal).		2022 Directed by: Giovanni Bognetti Screenplay by: Giovanni Bognetti Starring: Christian De Sica, Angela Finocchiaro

Flips the script with good characters and no action.

An action movie with very little action. I’m usually not a fan of action movies, but these characters intrigued me. Led by two women, the excess testosterone was removed from the genre leaving a movie that is slowly paced, a little lacklustre at times (not helped by the desert landscape), but not without its humanity. We should probably start with that poster because it’s advertising a completely different movie.		2023 Directed by: Shane Stanley Screenplay by: CJ Walley Starring: Danielle C. Ryan, Diora Baird, and Paul Haapaniemi

A funny and traditional rom-com tackling modern racial differences.

Writer and director Kenya Barris, known for Black-ish and Girls Trip, now turns his sights to a more traditional rom-com. A rom-com featuring an interracial couple and meddling parents who make life so difficult for the pair that they’re out here questioning if blacks and whites can even be friends. But don’t worry, you’ll be laughing too hard to spend too much time worrying about the state of society.		2023 Directed by: Kenya Barris Screenplay by: Kenya Barris, Jonah Hill Starring: Jonah Hill, Lauren London, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Eddie Murphy

Subdued, but fair and impassioned.

On Sacred Ground is the true story of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the protests at the Standing Rock Reservation. It opens with a Texas Oil Company paying a Houston newspaper to do an article about how awesome they are, so the newspaper scours the freelance journalism networks to find the most easily bought-off reporter that they could hire to cover the protests in the most pro corporate oil way possible.		2023 Directed by: Josh Tickell, Rebecca Harrell Tickell Screenplay by: William Mapother, Josh Tickell Starring: William Mapother, Kerry Knuppe

Door Mouse creates a very specific world, but one which is hard to get used to. Mouse (Hayley Law) is a comic book artist and a dancer at a burlesque club. The aesthetic is gritty punk, or neo-noire as marketed. Mouse is poor, lives in the slums, drinks coffee, smokes cigarettes, draws her comics and then goes to work. Rinse and repeat.		2022 Directed by: Avan Jogia Screenplay by: Avan Jogia Starring: Hayley Law, Keith Powers