Emily Knecht/Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
Am I OK? (2022)
It’s a Hollywood adage that putting a question mark in a movie title is bad luck. For a movie that centers on anxiety, the question mark in “Am I OK?” is a surprising choice. But that’s the only old adage codirectors Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne, directing Lauren Pomerantz’s script, have ignored. This is a glossy movie, in the tradition of Claudia Weill’s “Girlfriends” and Noah Baumbach’s “Frances Ha,” about how underemployed female best friends maintain their closeness as adulthood pulls them in separate directions. It looks modern, but it’s nothing new. Not even its exploration of coming out as portrayed by the most sexually bold actress of her generation contains anything like a surprise.
Continue reading “Growing Apart” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Soul Men (2008)
Doug Hyun/Dimension Films
The development of “Soul Men” as outlined in its press kit instructively illustrates the wrong way to go about making a movie. The project originated not out of the organic creative need of screenwriters Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone to tell the story at hand. Rather, it began with producers Steve Greener and David T. Friendly, who, according to the latter, had nothing but “the notion of these two guys (Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac) in a movie.” That led to a meeting with the writers, at which “either Rob or Matt said, 'What if Sam and Bernie were back-up singers like the Pips? The leader of the group has died and they have to go to New York to do a tribute concert.' And I said, 'That’s it. That’s a movie.' ”
Continue reading “No Soul Food, Just Mac and Lots of Cheese” »