Female Film Critics 24/375
Depression doesn’t play favorites. Neither does anxiety. A loving family, a creative career, and financial stability are no defense against the darkness that creeps into one’s mind, as the drama A Mouthful of Air demonstrates through one mother’s anguish. Making her feature directing debut, Amy Koppelman adapted her fictional 2003 novel of the same name, based on her own experience with clinical depression.
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Erase all thoughts of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in African Queen from your mind. Delete scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Pretend you’re back at Disneyland on the Jungle Cruise because it lasts eight minutes compared to the film’s 127. The film version equals a theme park ride in fake-itude. Jungle Cruise, loud and long, is about as solid as the floating vegetation on the Amazon River.
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Gunpower Milkshake is proof that you can have five talented, compelling actors acting the hell out of themselves and it still won’t make up for a one-dimensional derivative script. I’d still crawl through teargas to see Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh, and Carla Gugino in an assassin sisterhood, but it’s a real disappointment they didn’t have a script that could leverage their combined star power and thespian skill.
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Opening Aug. 29, AWFJ’s Movie of the Week is The Congress, from writer-director Ari Folman and starring Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Danny Huston, Paul Giamatti, and Jon Hamm. The unusual film combines live action and animation to present a unique premise set in a world in the not-too-distant future where Wright gives a studio control over her digital likeness for use in perpetuity. Read on…
Read moreJust looking at actor Paul Giamatti’s face evokes ‘everyman’ vulnerability, so he’s perfectly cast as Mike Flaherty, a schlubby, cash-strapped,
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