Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : Mary ( Juliet Stevenson ) and a mysterious stranger ( Erin Doherty ) as viewed by John ( Jared Harris , not shown) in a scene from the fractured family drama, 'Reawakening ', a British film written and directed by Virginia Gilbert . Still courtesy of Eclipse Pictures (Ireland), Signature Entertainment (UK) To lose a child. To experience your child, aged fourteen, run away from home, never to return. To appeal to the media – the world – and hear nothing. To sit at home, blaming, fretting, focussing on one thing. To grieve without a body. To flinch at sympathy. To watch the bills mount up. To return to work, unwillingly. To shift focus but always revert to that central wrong. To repeat the question: why? To pretend - at work, at home, living with the fog of distraction and trauma. To carry on. Reawakening , British writer-director Virginia Gilbert’s second feature – her first was A Long Way from Home starring James Fox and Brenda Fricker released in 2013 – explore...

Pictured : Roki ( Isabel Deroy-Olson ) and aunt Jax ( Lily Gladstone ) in a scene from co-writer-director Erica Tremblay 's missing person drama, ' Fancy Dance '. Still courtesy of Apple TV Another debut feature. Another film about life on a Native American reservation. Except Fancy Dance , co-writer-director Erica Tremblay’s tale of a barely investigated disappearance, goes into the wider world. Her protagonist, Jax (Lily Gladstone) has a white American father, Frank (Shea Whigham), who wasn’t exactly around after Jax’s mom died but has since remarried. He seeks custody of Jax’s thirteen-year-old niece, Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) after Roki’s stripper-prostitute mother disappears. Quite why Jax’s brother JJ (Ryan Begay) who works in law enforcement, more as an apologist than a deterrent to crime, doesn’t offer to take care of the girl is moot. Perhaps Frank isn’t his father; their scenes together don’t vibrate with familial tension. It is hard to attach a genre to Fancy Dan...