Larry Oliver Film Reviews

Pictured : Channelling her inner Gena Rowlands, Shelly ( Pamela Anderson ) worries about the future in director Gia Coppola 's film, ' The Last Showgirl ', written by Kate Gersten . Still courtesy of Roadside Attractions (US) / Picturehouse Entertainment (UK) I am generally suspicious of films and television series that begin with the words ‘The Last’. For every The Last of the Mohicans , there is The Last Boy Scout , The Last Black Man in San Francisco and The Last of Us . While we live in a time of absolutes – it won’t be long before there is a film entitled The Last Civil Servant , describing the US Department of Government Efficiency’s current purges of US administrative departments – generally, beliefs, races, pastimes, professions survive in one form or another. If children are no long cleaning chimneys in London, they are certainly picking through toxic trash in South America. The latest film destined for the middle of an alphabetized DVD shelf is The Last Showgirl...

  Pictured : Linda ( Rose Byrne ) in a scene from the white-knuckle comedy-drama, 'If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You', written and directed by Mary Bronstein . Still courtesy of Berlinale / A24 Films A contemporary of Greta Gerwig and Sean Baker, writer-director Mary Bronstein is a graduate of the School of Safdie, Summa cum Lauda. That’s Josh and Benny Safdie, the writer-directors of Good Time , a film whose intensity Bronstein’s second feature, the uncompromisingly titled, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You , mirrors. For almost two hours we are caught up in the whirlwind of therapist Linda’s daily routine, Bronstein fixing her camera on Linda’s face to the point where we can read her every thought. Rose Byrne gives a performance of which her work in recent comedies like Bad Neighbours does not prepare us. The film’s relentless pace, the use of sound, with horror movie-like jolts, flashbacks reached by way of journeys through time and space, the demands made of its heroine, reach a ...