Director: Christy Hall
Writer: Christy Hall
Stars: Dakota Johnson, Sean Penn, Marcos A. Gonzalez

Synopsis: A woman taking a cab ride from JFK engages in a conversation with the taxi driver about the important relationships in their lives.

A film like Daddio shouldn’t work, but it does. After all, how can you enjoy (or even support) a film seen through a feminist lens that has a weathered Sean Penn saying the word “panties” a half dozen times without some kickback from the media and the audience? That’s a bit of a high-wire act. Imagine being brave enough to fill a script with revelations with a limited cast of characters that run the risk of being unrelatable to its audience. 

Yet, the script from the up-and-coming filmmaker Christy Hall is clever in the way it draws the audience in and fosters forgiveness for its characters. Even a chance meeting between two strangers in a New York City cab, usually ending with little to no communication and a two-star review, is transformed into something compelling.

Hall’s script is a bottleneck story that follows only two characters. The film starts with a young woman, simply known as “Girlie” (Dakota Johnson), looking for a cab ride back to her New York City apartment after flying into John F. Kennedy International Airport. She has had a long flight from her small Oklahoma hometown in Girlie, described as the “armpit” of the state’s panhandle.

Girlie is young, beautiful, independent, and confident. Her steely blue eyes stand out among her bleach-blonde hair when the highway lights catch them through the car window just right. Girlie’s driver, Clark (Sean Penn), is a different story. He has a bad haircut and a vintage Tom Selleck mustache, a face like a catcher’s mitt, a rough texture, and deep wrinkles showing signs of age.

Clark has been a cabbie for a lifetime. As a young man, he met his wife while driving her from a club. He manipulates Girlie into talking, weaving a story about how many don’t tip well since most cabs have gone cashless. However, an unexpected connection starts between them—nothing sexual, just two people who develop an alliance over shared struggles and grief.

Writer and director Christy Hall’s Daddio is engaging and entertaining, thanks to the magnetic performances of Johnson and Penn. Their expressive eyes convey stories from both perspectives, speaking volumes in a single look. Through non-verbal communication, they offer enough emotional depth that most actors can only dream of.

Hall’s script focuses on the presence and internal conflict within the characters when the conversation reaches a standstill. This technique works because both characters start at opposite ends of the spectrum. Johnson is young, modern, and likable, while Penn is gruff, set in his ways, and lacks sensibility and boundaries. 

In any other script, Penn’s behavior would drag the film down. In another movie, it wouldn’t be believable how open she would be to talking about her life with a man like that, where one may be guarded. However, when we read the text messages from Girlie’s boyfriend, they make Penn’s Clark look like a gentleman by comparison, drawing the audience in.

This is a terrific first-time feature by Hall, who writes a script with addictive, snappy dialogue that’s empathetic as you can see the boundaries slowly wash away. While the ending lacks an emotional punch, it somehow finds a mutual grey area where both characters share uncertainties or ambiguities of their lives that become profoundly human and how the briefest connections can leave a lasting mark. 

That alone makes Daddio worth watching because of the spiritual intimacy lost since the pandemic but now is making a comeback because we no longer can hide behind our phones to prevent us from looking over complexities of what it means to be human. 

That’s what Christy Hall’s film is about. We need to go above and beyond by truly trying to seek and understand someone instead of tearing down because you never know what someone is truly going through at the moment.

Grade: B+

Director: Michael Sarnoski
Writers: Michael Sarnoski, John Krasinski, Bryan Woods
Stars: Joseph Quinn, Lupita Nyong’o, Alex Wolff

Synopsis: A woman named Sam finds herself trapped in New York City during the early stages of an invasion by alien creatures with ultrasonic hearing

There is something fundamentally wrong with the script of A Quiet Place: Day One from the moment the first waves of acute audiophile aliens touch down in New York City. However, that doesn’t mean the prequel to A Quiet Place doesn’t offer an exciting, suspenseful, and armrest-grabbing experience. In fact, it’s a killer monster picture.

A Quiet Place: Day One may not offer the same original thrills, but the prequel gets the job done, predominantly because of another gripping performance from its star, Lupita Nyong’o.

The film begins with residents of a hospice group home sitting in a circle, each reading their own poetry. Reuben (Alex Wolff), the behavioral nurse, encourages a young resident named Samira (Nyong’o) to read hers aloud for the group. However, her recitation offends those around her. She is acting out because she’s dying from a terminal disease.

Reuben convinces Samira to join him in the city for a show. She agrees only that they can get pizza from the urban center, home to America’s finest pizza (none of that small-town cardboard crust). Samira gathers her cat, Frodo (played by Hollywood felines Nico and Schnitzel), to watch a man perform with a few marionettes on stage.

That’s when chaos erupts. Army trucks race through crowded borough streets, and tension mounts as a few F-35A Lightning II jets streak through the sky. Camouflaged soldiers fill the streets. Most significantly, the New York City skyline explodes as unidentified flying objects plummet from the heavens, bringing Death Angels into our backyard.

John Krasinski steps away from the camera and hands over the reins to director Michael Sarnoski (Pig), who has the impossible task of maintaining the same quality as the original two science fiction horror modern classics. For one, the novelty has worn off. We know what the creatures look and act like. 

Also, the canon of the film being quiet is naturally not part of the story until later, taking away that ominous tone and feel. Additionally, I would like to talk about the fundamental flaw of Sarnoski’s A Quiet Place: Day One’s script. After the initial invasion, everyone flees, scared, screaming, and running for their lives. 

From the very moment around the start of the second act, every character knows to be quiet. Sarnoski had a chance to build some dramatic irony immediately, which would have led to greater audience engagement with the story. Instead, the audience is aware, but the characters should not be at this point. This takes away a lot of suspense and originality from the experience. 

That being said, A Quiet Place: Day One is worth watching as an extension of the first two films. Accepting the film on those terms is good fun, with some genuine moments of spine-tingling suspense. Djimon Hounsou, who reprises his role as Henri, and Wolff have the best two scenes in the film. 

The addition of Stranger Things’s Joseph Quinn, from Stranger Things, reverses the damsel-in-distress trope, as Nyong’o’s character looks after the damoiseau. While Quinn’s performance is acceptable, his character arc sputters and remains one-note. Nyong’o’s portrayal, however, deserves praise. The Academy Award-winning actress puts a cap on the histrionic acting here, giving the role a three-dimensional quality that can be haunting at times.

I’m not sure A Quiet Place: Day One would be as effective without Nyong’o’s fully realized turn. She plays Samira with subdued urgency, suffering quietly with great fear. Alongside high-octane action invasion sequences, expertly plotted setups, a scene-stealing Frodo, and a few well-timed jump scares, Sarnoski’s film may be a flawed gem. 

Nonetheless, it offers escapist entertainment tailor-made for the big-screen experience, which will get your palms sweaty and your heart pumping.

Grade: B

Director: Kit Zauhar
Writer: Kit Zauhar
Stars: Kit Zauhar, Zane Pais, Ian Edlund, Jessie Pinnick

Synopsis: Tensions rise when a couple stays at the home of a reclusive host, with the three entering an intimate battle to gain and reclaim territory.

Despite its basic premise – girl falls for boy and hurts those closest to her in the process – Kit Zauhar’s first feature, Actual People, is a tough sit. Not because it’s by any means a bad film, but because it’s a shockingly recognizable story. It follows Riley (played by Zauhar), a recent NYU graduate who desperately pines for the attention and affections of a boy from Philadelphia, her hometown, and proceeds to take advantage of all in her orbit in order to win him over. Of course, she learns a great deal about herself as she attempts to find her place in the world, but it’s not the sort of film that concludes with a metaphor-laden monologue about independence nor identity. Instead, it’s a film that places a mirror in front of its viewer and asks, “Do you think you’re a good person?”

Zauhar might believe that such people exist, but she’s certainly not interested in featuring them in her films. “I just don’t think nice people are interesting on camera,” she told Filmmaker Magazine in 2022. “I think art is meant to reflect the worst parts of yourself back to you. Unlikable characters can make you a better, and I think more empathetic, person in real life. The function of a lot of really great art is to make you confront brutality and cruelty, so that you can walk out into the world and be a little bit more conscious of horrible things that are happening, maybe even inside of you.” 

It’s an interesting idea, one that Zauhar has made good on twice now, both in her 2021 debut and in her sophomore effort, This Closeness. A work of psychoanalysis disguised as a one-location dramedy, it’s the sort of work that makes you feel more like a fly on the wall than a distant viewer; yet even as a fly, you are aware enough to feel the discomfort that comes with being somewhere you weren’t invited to. That’s not exactly the case for Tessa (Zauhar), an ASMR YouTuber, and her boyfriend, Ben (Zane Pais), who take a weekend trip to Pennsylvania for Ben’s high school reunion, only to find that their Airbnb host is still in the apartment when they arrive. (And he doesn’t intend to leave.) Adam (Ian Edlund) isn’t exactly a Grade-A welcome wagon, at first only exiting his room long enough to force awkward conversations upon his guests, or to reiterate the fact that it was his former roommate who posted the listing, not him. “You know when being socially awkward becomes a physical feature? That’s what happened to this guy,” Ben jokes. 

That descriptor may be true, but Adam also fits the socially awkward bill characteristically, making each ensuing interaction between This Closeness’ de facto trio more cringeworthy than the last. Early on in their stay, Tessa wishes to put some beer in the fridge, prompting Adam to show her that he has split each shelf directly down the middle with a piece of painter’s tape and two index cards – “Guest” on the left, “Host” on the right – dictating who can put what food where. His side is packed solid, while Tessa’s freshly-opened six pack is the sole occupant on her shelf. “Now it kinda just looks like I’m an alcoholic,” she says with a chuckle. “My parents are alcoholics,” Adam responds, deadpan. “Their fridge doesn’t look like that.”

Over the course of the film’s brisk, yet unsettling, 88 minutes, Adam grows to be less reclusive, and Tessa responds in kind, while Ben starts to show signs of toxicity from the moment he first leaves the apartment for a pre-reunion dinner, returning later with a flirty high school pal named Lizzie (Jessie Pinnick). Their interaction is the sort you’ve seen before, if not been a part of: A bond between two old friends that has an undeniable air of sexual tension, a considerable amount of teasing banter, and far too much touching for two people who claim to have never slept together. The morning after their late-night catch-up session, Tessa expresses her discomfort, to which Ben responds by telling her she’s wrong, with his primary grievance being that she’s not being nice to him – real words said by a real person in this film. The grand finale of this argument sees Ben slamming Tessa’s iced coffee on the ground; later, he “apologizes”, but qualifies his laments with, “Please be nice to me again.”

As much as This Closeness is a portrait of power in a shared environment, it’s also an incredibly sharp dissection of a toxic relationship, one in which the male assumes perpetual dominance over the female, who succumbs to his whiny requests no matter how irredeemable his actions are. It’s in these settings that Zauhar’s script is at its strongest, especially in a scene where Tessa calls her therapist in tears to discuss her relationship and describes her love for Ben as something that “feels really lonely.” 

She continues: “As much as I complain about him, or I know things aren’t working, or they could be and I just don’t know how to get us there – maybe that’s the same thing – I feel so much for him, and see so much in him that no one else does. I mean, you can’t explain what compels you to someone else, you just feel it in your whole body. And that’s why I think it’s so lonely, because you can love someone so much and not be able to share that with anyone.” In layman’s terms, Tessa is someone who is trying to justify the existence of a dying relationship, if it’s not already dead. When she notes that she wants to belong to Ben, her therapist asks, “Why?”, to which Tessa responds, “Because it means I won.”

Of course, “winning” is not a reason to stay with someone, an internal conflict that This Closeness puts to the test as it rolls toward its pitch-perfect final shot. The more in touch with these emotions Tessa gets, the more argumentative Ben grows, and the more approachable Adam becomes. It’s worth questioning, though: Are we seeing these men through Tessa’s point of view, even with her in the frame? Is Ben truly this over-critical, unnecessarily-cruel menace? Is the more congenial Adam an ideal version of him in Tessa’s eyes, this stranger representing a reprieve from the torturous partnership she’s locked herself in for years despite her silent urge to escape? 

Then again, perhaps these characters are exactly as they seem, fitting the same mold as all of Zauhar’s inventions. After all, she doesn’t think “nice people are interesting on camera”; had the four characters in This Closeness been “better” people, they wouldn’t have conjured such questions nor made for any sort of stimulating conversation. They would have been avatars operating in a setting with a conscious awareness of others, having inauthentic conversations about their peers, and enduring no conflict. Instead of beginning to form her own thematically-rich unofficial trilogy, a la Paul Schrader’s “Man in a Room” films (First Reformed, The Card Counter, and Master Gardener), Zauhar would have a series of stories that fall under the “People in a Room Doing Nothing Much at All” umbrella.

In a way, that distinction is fitting for the stories she wishes to tell, but she’s sure to litter her films with complications, ones that make these rooms battlegrounds and these people terrified soldiers. It’s an aesthetic that might grow tiring at 120 minutes, but at 88, it sings as a slice-of-life drama that will feel almost too familiar to every viewer, in some way or another. In all likelihood, they’ll walk away panicked, thinking, “I’m not like them… Right?”. I imagine that’s precisely the response Zauhar wants. As long as you keep returning to the mirror, looking a little bit deeper with every gaze until the truth finally comes out.

Grade: B

Director: Ally Pankiw
Writer: Ally Pankiw
Stars: Rachel Sennott, Olga Petsa, Jason Jones

Synopsis: Sam is a young stand-up comedian and au pair struggling with PTSD, who is weighing whether or not to join the search for Brooke, a missing girl she used to nanny.

If I could offer one recommendation pertaining to Ally Pankiw’s I Used to Be Funny – that is, without that recommendation being the movie itself – it would be to go in completely blind. Judging a book by its cover can lead to interesting returns in most cases, but doing so with a film of this nature makes for an even more curious exercise. I mean, it’s a dramedy starring Rachel Sennott as a stand-up comedian with the word “Funny” in the title. You’d be forgiven if your first instinct is to assume you’re in for a bundle of laughs. 

The reality of Pankiw’s debut feature is considerably darker: Indeed, Sennott portrays a stand-up comedian, and the now-trademark glibness that her characters tend to live by does peek through in one-liners aplenty, but I Used to Be Funny offers her an opportunity to utilize the dramatic chops her well-documented Tisch education afforded her back in the early days of her career. Sennott plays Sam, a comedian who supplements her income by working as an au pair for a wealthy family with a troubled daughter, Brooke (Olga Petsa). As the film unfolds on two separate, tonally-dissimilar timelines, we see Sam forming a unique bond with Brooke in one, while in the other, their bond has fractured due to something Sam did. (At least, according to Brooke.) 

This relationship-altering event, which involved Brooke’s father (Jason Jones) and is only vaguely referenced until we see it unfold in the film’s final act, has left Sam riddled with PTSD, and has sent Brooke running into the arms of older troublemakers in an effort to avoid her problems. Sam, in the interim, has quit comedy, broken up with her boyfriend (Ennis Esmer), and asked to crash with her comedian pals, Paige and Phillip (Sabrina Jalees and Caleb Hearon, respectively). These living conditions provide a natural comedic undertone to the proceedings, but Sennott’s zingers fly few and far between in comparison to what we’ve come to expect from the Bottoms star. Needless to say, Bottoms this is not; it’s not even Shiva Baby, the indie that launched Sennott to relevance and carried with it a droll, cringey humor, the likes of which I Used to Be Funny doesn’t waste time attempting to replicate.

Of course, that’s because it has different things on its mind. It’s a film that is far more concerned with comedy’s role in grief, how connections can be formed and broken through trauma, and the lengths we will go to to hide from the world that seems to kick us while we’re down. But the more I Used to Be Funny jostles back and forth from one timeline to the next, it becomes scattered, both narratively and tonally. It’s a worn out stylistic approach already, non-linear storytelling, but when a film becomes so reliant on its perks, things go one of two ways. Either the train falls off the tracks entirely, leaving narrative threads strewn about the wilderness waiting for someone to pick them up and piece them back together, or the story’s principle twist – if we must call this film’s primary trauma a “twist” – is depended upon so heavily that we spend over an hour teasing this inevitable-yet-elusive reveal, and said reveal thus lands with an unremarkable thud. 

Now, it doesn’t help that I Used to Be Funny telegraphs its most emotional moments through a slew of Phoebe Bridgers needle drops, a cheap (albeit catchy) strategy that causes the film’s opportunities for natural melodrama to go up in smoke. (Not to mention the fact that “I Know the End” – a song with the lyrics “yeah, I guess the end is here” – plays as the credits roll. As if things couldn’t get more on the nose.) Ultimately, this is just a showcase for Sennott, a chance for a well-known comedic actress to dabble in drama. If only the dramatic moments she’s given weren’t so ham-handed, and the comedic ones so brisk.

Then again, at least Pankiw is upfront about why: This might be a movie about a comedian, but it’s about one who used to be funny. And while it wasn’t that long ago when Sam had camera crews in house to film her own special, horrible things can happen fast, thus zapping even the wittiest comic of the ability to laugh at her own pain. What’s a shame is that Sam’s trauma feels dismissed in the moment, not intentionally, but due to the film’s lack of overall focus. As it lobs misdirection at you from every which way, pulling you from one timeline to another, it stunts its own momentum, causing us to have more questions than answers by the time it reaches its abrupt, saccharine conclusion. 

Was the film we just watched about a young female comedian attempting to rediscover her voice after it was yanked from her grasp due to the emotional ramifications of a traumatic event? Was it about rebuilding relationships with loved ones while repairing an even more significant relationship, the one with ourselves? Or was it about the complicated dynamic between a cool au pair and the teenage nightmare she looked after before she went missing? Well, yes, to all of the above. All three work as premises, but become too much for one debut to cover. And there’s only so much an audience can do when the movie they’re watching has no idea what story it wants to tell the most.

Grade: C-

Director: Kevin Hegge
Writer: Kevin Hegge
Stars: Judy Blame, Duggie Fields, Princess Julia

Synopsis: Rising from the nihilistic ashes of the punk movement in the late 1970s, a fresh crowd of flamboyant fashionistas, who would later be christened the New Romantics, began to materialize on the streets of London, England.

The Bromley Contingent. The Blitz Kids. St Martins College. Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane and Jubilee. David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes film clip. Squatting in a not quite gentrified London. SEX/SOCIETY. The artists on the fringe of the fringe. The best of times and the worst of times. They were kids running from austerity and making art out of themselves. They had no product – they were the product. “Wasn’t it fabulous at The Blitz? Oh please!” responds the then elder Philip Sallon. It was punk, it was post-punk, it was the New Romantics. The DIY decadents who flocked to London from their working-class homes and were artists with their bodies as the canvas.

Canadian filmmaker Kevin Hegge documents a period which started as far back as the mid 1970s with the Alternative Miss World and in many ways still exists despite many of the main players being wiped out by drugs or the tidal wave which was AIDS. Hegge primarily focuses on four voices who are the guides to the moments which defined a New Britain while the old one had quietly slipped away after the Swinging ‘60s. A world where Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren acted as punk impresarios delving into the world of bondage and provocation. 1977 at The Roxy, The Clash played. The Roxy had formerly been a gay club. Punk was queer – just no one was ready to admit it until it burned its nihilistic flame and from the shadows emerged a new light. That light was radically queer and led by John Maybury (filmmaker and artist), Judy Blame (DIY fashionista and stylist), Scarlett Cannon (a model and club kid), and Princess Julia (an iconic DJ and promoter). There were many more people: A young George O’Dowd who was the coat check attendant at nightclubs so he could steal money. The same George O’Dowd who is forever now Boy George. Steve Strange who ran The Blitz and refused to let Mick Jagger in. 

John Maybury calls it a golden era of experimentation. The government was paying bursaries for people to go to art colleges. If you were happy to forgo regular meals and basic hygiene you could share a group of rundown Edwardian terraces with like-minded (or not – love and hate co-existed) creatives and be the art. Some people were already on the road to success – Siouxsie Sioux, Adam Ant, Amanda Donohoe, Mark Moore. Others connected in the community of misfits and mudlarked their fashion. New York and Berlin were epicenters of culture, but London was about to emerge once again like the ever-rising phoenix and redefine fashion, art, and music once more. Exclusive and inclusive – icons and iconoclasts in 24/7 performance mode.

Hegge’s documentary begins with a whirl inspired by John Maybury’s 1994 video art project Remembrance of Things Past which stars Tilda Swinton (a constant presence in Jarman films and a Maybury collaborator) and Princess Julia. Styled by Judy Blame and with a below the line crew of stylists and costumers who were part of the Blitz Kids generation (sadly, many now gone). There is chaos at the gates of HELL (the club), taboo breaking at TABOO. Leigh Bowery, the post gender creator who fled suburban Melbourne for London and used his day job at a fast-food chain to pay for his entry into a world of transgression. There are the neo-naturalists – the Binnie sisters writhing in body paint nestled against the classical dancers Les Child and Michael Clark (OBE). 

Even the straight women and men admitted they were dressing up in a radical drag. The queer body was becoming male/female/undefined. Nipples, mounds of Venuses, cock-sure young cocks who whirled about in a Genet and Fassbinder world next to Greek and Roman deities or pirates, the Royalty of the past (Queen Elizabeth I) or Ray Petri’s buffalo dandies. Quentin Crisp stopped into cafes for ‘grey coffee’ – David Bowie recruited for his ‘Scary Monsters’ film clips. Everyone was alive with possibility, but the shadow of austerity and AIDS merged with the party stopping and starting. Heroin took some. Extremity took others. Accidents and coincidences like a perpetual cut-with-the-kitchen-knife collage brought people together and tore them apart.

“We didn’t have a product, we were the product,” Judy Blame announces. How could they monetize their existence? Some moved into fine art, some into becoming stylists, and some into music. The beautiful Marilyn, who was always with Boy George, released a hit single and then faded away for over twenty years into a crack addiction. 

Many artistic and fashion movements are interrupted by war or inspired by it. For the Tramps, the war was poverty, AIDS, and fleeting fame. But what luminosity! Without the post-punk generation there would be no i-D magazine. No issues of The Face. Life would have been perpetually elsewhere in a Warhol or Studio 54 blur. Interview Magazine or Rolling Stone would still be the bastion of gonzo journalism with NME and Melody Maker fighting for British supremacy. There would be no Smash Hits magazine. 

Living fearlessly came with a cost for many – John Maybury seems left in a small void of survivor’s guilt (his partner Trojan died of a heroin overdose, his mentor Derek Jarman died of AIDS, Leigh Bowery died of AIDS… so many, too many). Yet the moments in the neon lit sun or the dingy squats that became art collectives had energetic joy which came together in the BodyMap fashion shows which produced their ready to wear street couture (something we see as standard now) that included bodies young, old, of colour, and of varying sexuality. 

Judy Blame says that death and poverty hold no sway. The melancholy aspect of the documentary is that Blame passed away before it was released. Princess Julia others can barely speak of the losses they witnessed. Some cracked under mental health pressures. Hegge allows that there are people who do not wish to speak at all of their time, and those who simply cannot.

“London is a shithole,” says Blame. Debt and gentrification mean that London is now a place where the creatives are in Princess Julia’s words “No longer fucking each other but fucking each other over.” It’s a little misty eyed for her and her nostalgia for a seemingly golden period. Austerity is back and life is elsewhere again. But without the ‘Lesbians, Queers, Punks, and Prostitutes’ who daily caught the Tube on their way to be ‘seen’ there is so much of culture which just wouldn’t exist. No Alexander McQueen fashion house. No BOY London. No Neneh Cherry. Kylie Minogue would still be singing about being lucky and doing the locomotion. Tramps! reminds the audience that there are those who will never Fade to Grey.

Grade: B+

Director: Annie Baker
Writer: Annie Baker
Stars: Zoe Ziegler, Luke Philip Bosco, June Walker Grossman

Synopsis: In rural Western Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy spends the summer of 1991 at home, enthralled by her own imagination and the attention of her mother, Janet. As the months pass, three visitors enter their orbit, all captivated by Janet.

With her debut feature film, Janet Planet, playwright Annie Baker writes and directs one of the most delightful films you’re likely to see all year. There are many factors that contribute to the warmth that basically pours off the screen, but the most apparent is immediately clear. It’s Zoe Ziegler’s performance as Lacy, the young girl around which this film is structured. We meet 11-year-old Lacy as she wakes up in the middle of the night. She sneaks outside to a public telephone and makes a very comical call, but to Lacy, it appears to be a grave one. She wants to go home immediately, and in the morning, her mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), comes to pick Lacy up from camp. Lacy walks towards her mother calmly and casually, drops everything she’s holding, and is provided with that critical embrace so many of us might remember from childhood. At such a young age, the feeling that the very expansive world around us emanates can become quite crushing. While we may not be even remotely aware of the struggles that come with adulthood, as children, we very much have our own sets of worries. Internal dilemmas feel that much larger when they’re the sole focus of our lives. And without time, it’s difficult to process such overwhelming feelings.  

At an age where summers were devoted to practicing piano or playing with toys, or just casually adventuring around the house, moments of solitude could become quite overbearing. In the case of Lacy, being away from her home and her mother appears to have been the breaking point. I too have called home from a sleepaway camp and begged to be picked up, and what should be exciting and refreshing becomes something far worse. It’s a clear-cut indication, at least in my mind as a child, that the universe was telling me I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to be back home, watching television or making up games to play in the backyard. We are all looking for some semblance of familiarity at that age to calm us, rather than venture out into the unknown journey of growing up and growing apart. And Janet Planet is interested in what it means to slowly lose that sense of familiarity. Whether or not it’s for better or for worse, is left to us to be decided.

Now, the film may be called Janet Planet, but much like a solar system, Janet’s orbit revolves around the most important star there is: Lacy. Nothing is ever outright revealed through the film, but one can’t imagine single mother Janet is having the easiest time raising the young girl. It would appear that, more often than not, Janet puts Lacy before herself. And these decisions come to a head and provide the film with a very specific conflict. Made up of extended vignettes, Baker both introduces and removes a trio of individuals brought into Lacy’s life in a very classical playwright fashion. Upon first use, it’s a moment worthy of a chuckle. Yet over time, it takes shape into something fundamental about the film. 

Lacy is an inquisitive girl in the very funny way children often are. She’s deeply curious, and hides no questions, even in the face of being told to leave a room or to be quiet. It’s not that she’s unaware of what’s occurring, as she does appear to be very intelligent, but more so that she just can’t help herself. One gets the sense that she’s asking countless questions in the hopes of hearing a perfect answer. And that answer will hopefully unlock the entire mystery of this new person who has found themselves in the orbit of Janet and Lacy’s seemingly idyllic life. While on the surface, it may appear the two are living a comfortable, remote life in the Western Massachusetts woods, the quiet moments of reflection in this film reveal the complicated set of emotions at work. And it’s in these tender moments between mother and daughter that the film comes to life. But it also reveals what I feel the film struggles with a bit.

The main issue that appears to plague Baker’s script structure is seemingly its indecision to focus primarily on Lacy or Janet. There’s obviously no issue with the film being interested in both characters as two halves of a larger piece. But personally, it feels a bit as if both characters get the short end of the stick by the time we emerge on the other side. The questions and emotions Janet Planet brings forth over its soothing runtime are certainly felt, but one may find themselves asking for a bit more to chew on as the credits roll. Luckily, Baker’s screenplay is a dense one, and provides plenty to be affected by. To me, Janet Planet is at its best when it focuses on Lacy and her outlook on life. That’s not to say Janet takes up a large chunk of this film. And by no means is that necessarily an issue on its own, as Nicholson delivers a really strong and subdued performance. Ziegler’s performance as Lacy is just one that is so deeply charming, you can’t help but want more. And so much of the film early on feels framed from her point-of-view; so any shift that occurs from there then feels a bit out-of-place. Baker’s camera wanders or focuses in on select moments as if it were the eyes of a child. When Lacy is in the car with Janet and then-boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton), we notice the backs of their ears and beard stubble via off-center, yet acutely focused, close-up shots. At its best, Janet Planet sees Baker innately capturing fragments of time with an undeniable charm. They are all moments that feel rich with memory and a hope to understand the past. And one sequence in particular captures how moments in time can be mined for resonance, even years later. 

During one segment of the film, Lacy and Janet find themselves with a house guest. Regina, an old friend of Janet, is staying with them. They have not seen each other in a few years, but that seems irrelevant to Janet. At some point or another, these two had a connection. And Janet seems like the type to never harbor ill will. As the two are speaking candidly late one night, Regina finds herself detailing a story about her and her father. And it’s a moment that, while resembling the very core idea of the legendary Mad Men meme, is a genuinely effective observation on the moments in life that make us who we are. More importantly, it highlights how those moments in time are just that to some: moments. A completely forgotten conversation that cannot possibly be comprehended in retrospect.

Yet it has irrevocably changed the path of an individual. It’s quietly devastating, as some of us, including Janet, may never know those moments which affected us deeply but have also been forgotten. Further, have we forgotten a moment that has done the same to somebody else? Janet Planet, at its very core, feels as if we all have, and will likely continue to do so throughout life. We can hold onto as much as we like in this life but, sooner or later, we either drop it, or simply pass the weight onto the next person.

More than anything, it feels as if Baker’s script is grappling with some rather lofty ideas of the varying bonds and relationships formed in life. When channeled through the lens of a coming-of-age story, it makes for a viewing both charming and intriguing. As stated, the sentiments are felt consistently throughout Janet Planet, even if the overall focus feels spread a bit too thin. One can’t help but think of a particularly striking image from the film when reflecting on its overall ideas. Unexpectedly, artwork in Janet’s home begins being removed off of a wall. One New Yorker cover in particular is unceremoniously removed from the tape holding it up, leaving a chunk of the cover left behind. Lacy sees this piece of tape and small fragment of what once filled space, and it’s a beautiful testament to what Baker is conveying with this debut film. Though her career thus far has spanned countless award-winning plays, Baker’s natural visual storytelling is perhaps most exciting to witness. That scrap held up by tape may resemble a memory, only partially viewable. Our memory will fill in the blanks as best as possible, but for the most part, it is merely lost to time. Whether that’s for better or for worse is up to the viewer, and Lacy, and Janet, to decide in the end.

Grade: B-

Directors: James Erskine, Rachel Ramsay
Writers: James Erskine, Victoria Gregory, Rachel Ramsay
Stars: Elvira Aracen, Brandi Chastain, Birte Kjerns

Synopsis: Told by the pioneering women who participated, this is the extraordinary story of the 1971 Women’s Soccer World Cup, a tournament witnessed by record crowds that has been written out of sporting history – until now.

There are certain moments in the history of sports that are unjustly forgotten or ignored for various reasons. Past ignorance, particularly towards women, has stymied progress which could have grown sports much earlier than when it began growing with the inclusion of women. However, time becomes friendly to these moments and are unearthed for the good, as with Copa ‘71 from directors Rachel Ramsey and James Erskine. It is one event that many soccer fans would not have been aware of very much until seeing this inspiring documentary. 

The opening of Copa ‘71 starts with Brandi Chastain, when former player (and hero) from the USA Women’s World Cup squad of 1999, is given a tablet with archive footage of an event buried in history. She says the first Women’s World Cup was in 1991 (officially, yes), but Chastain has no clue until she watches what is playing in front of her about the women playing soccer in front of a crowd of 100,000 people in Mexico City. It is something she has never heard of because it remains an unofficial, unrecognized event in FIFA’s history books. It was the Women’s World Cup of 1971, which featured six teams, but due to the sexist politics of the time regarding women’s soccer, it was disregarded and mocked. 

Members of the six squads – Italy, France, Denmark, England, Mexico, and Argentina – are interviewed for what is their first time telling their story in over 50 years. Driving back in time, the living testimony of these players, mixed with surviving artifacts of what looked like a successful exhibition, puts into perspective the backwards notions that nations felt about women in a “male” sport. As noted in the film, several countries banned professional women’s soccer until 1970, and some countries even made it illegal. A major reason was women’s health: playing such physical sports would damage a woman’s reproductive system. A lot of the rules back then were countries controlling women’s bodies. 

Within this frustration is an overall entertaining film about a sisterhood in a time of change for women in general. Seeing the smiles on the participants’ faces during the competition and how even today they think fondly of the period, working together and playing efficiently in front of surprisingly massive crowds. While it doesn’t take a deeper dive as it could have with the system sexism of the time, it still feels like a crowd pleaser with some amazing memorabilia put out along with the filmed games. All of it just undermines the early perception of women’s sports, yet the idea was still undermined by the powers that be with total vindictiveness. 

Today, of course, it is a quickly growing sport to see professional women’s soccer and the World Cup that has become more popular since its formal start in 1991, but the reality is that it could’ve been already bigger. The infuriating thing audiences learn from this documentary was that the old traditions blocked progress for years, halting these surviving players from laying the groundwork for generations that missed out on a career. Decades delayed, Ramsey and Erskine finally gave the rightful glory to these women whose existence was denied for so long.

Grade: A-