Reviews of selected general release films
All of this is delicately handled by a deft directorial style commanded by Occhipinti with subtle poise. So much of the film is so quiet but for the smacking sounds of large meals being chewed and slurped. The louder scenes tend to be celebratory like an all-girls soiree where friends can let it all hang out in private.
Wearing the guise of a coming-of-age movie, this is actually a far more nuanced and layered character study of a young woman facing abuse, betrayal and disappointment from almost every corner of her life – and yet remaining almost relentlessly defiant in the face of it all.
Austin is the victim of its own success. Real estate is out of control. Taxes are going up. Wealthier residents are attracted to the Texan capital and the good old days of dirt-poor guitar players making it on minimum job wages by day then hitting the stage by night to try their luck at a music career are fading.
What’s most remarkable about his repeated admissions of being a walking, talking, singing toxic volcano ready to go off due to his anger issues and scorch the earth is the lack of desire to be absolved for the sins.
Wang manages to orchestrate the proceedings with a warm, knowing humor born out of character and the characters, as opposed to falling back on slapstick or anything broad or wacky.
DIRTY GOD purposefully takes a long, winding and jagged road toward Jade’s efforts to heal and find her own way to a new life she never asked for. This is not an easy redemption story that can take us comfortably across the finish line without the barest of emotional investments. Jade was assuredly not an angle cast down from the heavens, but rather, a working class beauty that is forced to overcome a fate she didn’t deserve.
The audience is primed for the usual suspects – hungry animal or potential rapist. But where Hafsia’s true adversary lies is in her mind. In other scenes, she is trying to commune with nature, and later with god. “What is the answer?” she demands to the empty woods. “You know what I am talking about!” she insists angrily. It is evident here that she herself cannot articulate the nature of her own angst.
What stands out in the film is just how much the flat earthers simply need to believe what they believe. It’s kind of like refusing to believe that OJ was guilty or maybe even letting go of the Santa Claus myth. The characters in the film are all too familiar. They’ve chosen to attach their identity to this belief system, and it means everything.
What stands out in the film is just how much the flat earthers simply need to believe what they believe. It’s kind of like refusing to believe that OJ was guilty or maybe even letting go of the Santa Claus myth. The characters in the film are all too familiar. They’ve chosen to attach their identity to this belief system, and it means everything.
Viewers will walk away from House Two with a strong feeling that this entire case was a gross miscarriage of justice. Epstein is aware enough of the truth, yet maintains a neutral tone in the film so as to not overly influence his audience.
