Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : Claudia ( Thora Birch , left) offers limited comfort to her traumatised sister Lidia ( Imogen Poots , right) in a scene from the film, ' The Chronology of Water ', adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch 's 2011 memoir by director Kristen Stewart . Still courtesy of Les Films Du Losange . For her feature debut as writer-director, actress Kristen Stewart has adapted Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, The Chronology of Water , an account published in 2011 of traumatic childhood and young womanhood from 1980 to the early 2000s. Both book and film are organised in five sections: ‘Holding Breath’, ‘Under Blue’, ‘The Wet’, ‘Resuscitations’ and ‘The Other Side of Drowning’. Stewart’s film is heavy on style: close-ups, match cuts, quick edits, flashes, fragmentation, voiceover. Such techniques can suggest inner torment – they do here – but also ward off empathy. Stewart is torn between showing Lidia (Imogen Poots) caught in the throes of trauma and illustrating her subjectivity through ...

Pictured :  Lea ( Marie Helweg Augustsen , right) submits to lipstick in a scene from the Danish wellness camp drama, ' Vægtløs ' (' Weightless '), written by Marianne Lentz and directed by Emilie Thalund . Still courtesy of Snowglobe (Denmark) The Danish drama, Weightless ( Vægtløs ) is ninety minutes of compelling teenage anxiety, telling the entirely relatable story of teenager Lea (Marie Helweg Augustsen) who spends her summer at a camp for obese children. Points are awarded for participation in physical exercise. Lunches are prescribed in ‘T’ rather than ‘Y’ formats, the proportion of meat to vegetables. However, the teenagers aren’t thinking about losing kilograms. They just want to be loved, being more affection than weight challenged. The debut feature of director Emilie Thalund, working from a script by Marianne Lentz, Weightless is distinguished by naturalistic performances, handheld camerawork and a narrative in which boundaries are crossed. While threaten...

  Pictured :  Berta ( Bärbel Schwarz ) is watched by young Alma ( Hanna Heckt ) in a scene from the farmhouse drama, ' In die Sonne schauen ' (English title ' Sound of Falling '), co-written and directed by Mascha Schilinski . Still courtesy of Studio Zentral (Germany) What we remember and what we document are two different things. Co-writer-director Mascha Schilinski’s second feature, In die Sonne schauen , retitled in English, Sound of Falling , could equally be re-titled, ‘If a Picture’. Photographs are a recurring motif, but these feature a figure seeking to escape who appears blurred in front of the camera. Photographs are intended as keepsakes, reminders of a particular time. However, in Schilinski’s film, they seem disconnected from reality because the unity or family feeling they seek to project is absent. The look at the camera tells us nothing about the subject’s turmoil. The more people feature in the photograph, the more there might be clues. However, famil...

Pictured : Kiah ( Keira Jang ) in 'recorder mode' in a scene from the Canadian 'alternate future' film, ' Can I Get A Witness? ' written and directed by Ann Marie Fleming . Still courtesy of Mongrel Media . I have more of a problem with the title, Can I Get A Witness? than the film itself. I spent much of my son’s childhood and adolescence reminding him that ‘can’ is about ability and ‘may’ is about permission. In Canadian writer-director Ann Marie Fleming’s alternate future-set film, citizens who reach the age of fifty automatically receive a witness to their state authorised death, though nobody in the movie talks about the government, which frankly must come as a relief. If someone delivers a refrigerator to your home, it is because you have chosen the option to consume a chilled alcoholic beverage before having lethal chemicals – a form of anti-pollen – released in your presence. Fleming describes her film as a ‘fable’. According to one AI definition, a fab...

Pictured : Charles Blakey ( Corey Hawkins ) answers the door in a scene from the drama, ' The Man In My Basement ', directed by Nadia Latif , who adapted Walter Mosley 's novel working with the author. Still courtesy of Andscape / Hulu (US) There are a few things wrong with British co-writer-director Nadia Latif’s feature debut, The Man In My Basement , adapted with the author from Walter Mosley’s novel, set as far as I can tell in 1986. Quite a few right things too. Overall, I remained intrigued throughout the near two-hour running time, being unfamiliar with the novel, never being sure where the story would go. It covers the subjects of guilt, isolation and heritage and is set in the African American community of Sag Harbor, formerly a major whaling and shipping port in Long Island, New York. ‘Moby Dick’ gets a shout out. To dismiss what’s wrong with it, first there’s the title. It suggests a more ‘first person’ - principal viewpoint character - experience than the on...

Pictured : Anna Coleman ( Lindsay Lohan ) gets freaky in front of her ex ( Chad Michael Murray ) in the family comedy sequel, ' Freakier Friday ', written by Jordan Weiss and Elyse Hollander and directed by Nisha Ganatra . Still courtesy of Walt Disney Studios . An outlier of summer movie releases, Freakier Friday is to date the highest grossing film in 2025 solely directed by a woman. As of 15 September, according to Box Office Mojo it has grossed $148,320,369 worldwide ($91,253,519 domestic). It is followed by two other summer releases, Materialists ($101,303,614) and the remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer ($64,713,860). In fourth and fifth place are The Salt Path ($20,906,667) and the German anthology sequel, Wunderschöner ($14,523,318) co-written and directed by Karoline Herfurth; the original spawned a Polish remake. These figures are important in an era in which women’s rights are being squeezed, and women-directed movies are increasing surfacing on streaming r...

  Pictured : Andy Goodrich ( Michael Keaton ) trying to make sense among the clutter in a scene from writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer 's Los Angeles-set comedy drama, ' Goodrich '. Still courtesy of Ketchup Entertainment (US); Rialto Distribution (Australia) Los Angeles gallery owner Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton), the protagonist of writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s ‘bittersweet’ comedy drama, Goodrich , didn’t know his wife Naomi (Laura Benanti) was addicted to prescription drugs. That’s the improbable pill we are asked to swallow at the beginning of the film. Naomi calls Andy to tell him not to freak out, but she’s checked into 90-day rehab. ‘And I’m leaving you,’ she enunciates emphatically. Naturally, Andy does the ‘what do you mean?’ schtick and the next day drives to ‘Happy Acres hush and flush’ or whatever the rehab centre is called and is told under no circumstances can he see his betrothed. Andy is forced to be a real parent to his nine-year-old twins, Bi...