Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Italian writer-director Carolina Cavalli redefines the female mental health film in her appealing, though not to all tastes, feature debut, Amanda . Featuring an intense central performance by Benedetta Porcaroli in the title role, it is a comedy about the need to connect, specifically a young woman who yearns to be noticed quivering in the face of attention. The film begins with young Amanda clutching a box of cereal whilst lying on a sun lounger in the middle of her family’s pool. On the side of the pool, her older sister, Marina is sunbathing. Sensing that she is almost invisible, or perhaps testing the response to her narcissism, Amanda tips her sun lounger over. Just as she does this, the family’s Latin American maid, appears with a tray bearing lemonade and glasses, which she promptly drops. Now an adult, Amanda reflects on an encounter in a cinema in which she and a male cinemagoer lock eyes. She waits for him. He looks at her. Nothing happens. ‘That was five years ago,’...

  At its heart, the comedy-drama Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul , written and directed by Adamma Ebo and produced by Adanne Ebo, the director’s sister, is about a showbusiness marriage on the rocks. The couple are determined to make one last go of it, one final throw of the dice, a big re-launch. By showbusiness, I am referring to religion. Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. Brown) and his wife, ‘First Lady’ Trinitie (Regina Hall) previously administered blockbuster sermons at their Southern Baptist ‘mega church’, Wander the Greater Paths (capacity: 25,000). They entertained local politicians and amassed a small fortune – their wardrobe could cloth a small town. I’m exaggerating; so do they. But sometimes you have to know when to quit, when something you did so tarnished your reputation, there’s no coming back. You got to accept that if there’s a job at the car dealership and someone willing to pay good money for your big expensive wardrobe, you take it. Ebo’s film started life ...

  Sharp Stick is sure to divide opinion. There will be those that hate it and those that hate it a lot. Those that hate it a lot will object to writer-director Lena Dunham’s portrayal of an autistic protagonist. Not that the ‘A’ word is ever mentioned but Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth) presents with the tropes of high-functioning autism: conditioned to be helpful and follow instructions but insensitive to others without being narcissistic. Dunham, best known for the hit HBO television series Girls in which she also starred, hasn’t made a film since for 2010 debut, Tiny Furniture. She has absolutely earned the right to try something challenging. Since debuting Sharp Stick at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, she has already completed her third film, Catherine, Called Birdy , which airs on Amazon Prime in the autumn. Critics can suck it. Set in the fringes of Hollywood, Sharp Stick depicts Sarah Jo’s sexual awakening, seemingly motivated by conversations she has with her biological mo...

  Contains spoilers (sorry) How many women are surprised by a stealth pregnancy where they think they are less than eight weeks pregnant, but the baby is actually due in two and a half months? I ask because the plot of Norwegian co-writer-director Yngvild Sve Flikke’s comedy, Ninjababy , hinges on this point. Encouraged by her flatmate to take a pregnancy test, unemployed party girl and occasional cartoonist Rakel (Kristine Kujath Thorp) discovers that she is with child. She assumes the father is martial arts instructor, Mos (Nader Khademi) with whom she had a one-night stand – sex doesn’t register as something especially memorable to her. When he asks her to have coffee with him, she reveals that she is expecting his offspring. Only, don’t worry, she has arranged an abortion. The next day, she misses her bus, so she calls Mos to drive her. At the clinic, she prepares for a termination only to be told that it isn’t legally possible – she is six and a half months pregnant. Reali...

  Booksmart is a bit like its central characters, Californian High School students, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein). It tries too hard. From its opening gag, involving a motivational speech (voiced by Maya Rudolph) that lapses into profanity, it goes for a heightened comedy style that does not deliver big laughs. I wouldn’t change the premise – about two clever girls who are perceived as not fun who over-compensate during one hearty night on the evening before graduation. I would tweak the execution, which relies heavily on over-needy people. No one wants to go to university ill-prepared for a new social start. Yet most of us arrive at uni with our personas still under construction. The script is credited to four writers: Sarah Haskins and Emily Halpern, writing partners who created the ABC television series, Trophy Wife ; Katherine Silberman, who wrote the Netflix rom-com, Set It Up ; and Susanna Fogel, who co-wrote and directed last year’s The Spy Who Dumped M...

  I’d like to make a prediction here on Sunday May 7, 2017, that on its eventual release in the UK, the film Brakes will be critically hammered. It is not that the film isn’t ambitious, funny and at times extremely well-acted. It is just that it exhibits writ-large the unconscious bias of its writer-director, Mercedes Grower. It is a film about break-ups, the moment when people look to their other half, their travelling companion on life’s travails and say ‘it’s not me, it’s you’. The more polite – can you be more polite in a break up – say ‘it isn’t working’ as if relationships are expected to be work. Compromise, yes. Tetchy - most certainly. Involve the throwing of crockery – only in the movies. Nothing says I hate you more than the smashing of a cereal bowl, except I still eat my Cheerios out of my son’s plastic ‘Noddy’ bowl, and it is very resilient. The couples don’t have children – or at least those under the age of eighteen – that we hear about. They are mostly young...

  How many Austrian comedies can you name? Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t count. A google search did yield one curiosity, The Unfish , a 1997 film by Robert Dornhelm about a young woman who discovers that whoever sleeps with her in the body of a preserved whale will be granted one wish. I know what that wish will be – a bed from IKEA. The point is that Austria is not known for its sense of humour. It is practically a lachenfrei zone. This makes writer-director Marie Kreutzer’s comedy, Was hat uns bloß so ruinert ( We Used To Be Cool ) so unusual. It doesn’t exactly tear down the stereotype but when you see one of the characters ride a bicycle at the same time as trying to pull a suitcase, you appreciate the effort. We Used To Be Cool will put you in mind of TV series like Thirtysomething and Cold Feet or films such as What to Expect When You’re Expecting . It is about three couples who become parents at the same time. One pair, Ines (Pia Hierzegger) and Chris (Manuel Rubey) spl...

  There are those who believe that the Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival should have been given to Toni Erdmann , a two-hour-and-forty-two-minute German comedy about an unusual father-daughter relationship. As many critics will tell you, comedies don’t win major prizes as they are assumed to be frivolous – not art. There are two recent exceptions. La Vita È Bella (Life is Beautiful) (1997) winner of the 1998 Best Picture Oscar featured a father (Roberto Benigni) fighting to convince his young son (Gioergio Canterini) that they are not in a concentration camp and that the adults around them are playing an elaborate game. Michel Hazanvicius’ The Artist (2011) winner of the 2012 Best Picture Oscar was also a comedy about an over-confident silent movie star (Jean Dujardin) lost in the sound era. Let’s not also forget that Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H. won the Palme D’Or equivalent at Cannes in 1970. As these films prove, a comedy can say as much as a serious film. This is c...

  Pictured : 'I took four trains to get here and we're seeing the movie.' Eden ( Ilana Glazer , right) prepares the heavily pregnant Dawn ( Michelle Buteau ) for entertainment in the laugh-out-loud comedy, ' Babes ', written by Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz and directed by Pamela Adlon . Still courtesy of Neon (US), Universal Pictures (UK) The misleadingly titled Babes is a comedy about female friendship in which two young women support each other during pregnancy, one in marriage, the other outside it. For a film as funny as it is, it did not attract a wide audience. I put it down to the advertising: the thinner of the two women, Eden ( Ilana Glazer , who co-wrote the screenplay with Josh Rabinowitz ) stares at a positive pregnancy test while her friend Dawn ( Michelle Buteau ) looks on. If I take it at face value, so what? Contrast it with the poster for Baby Boom – Diane Keaton in a business suit holding a baby - where you can see the potential for comedy. (‘I ca...