Lena Dunham is not afraid of a ‘Sharp Stick’

A young woman sits on a green swivel chair with pink streamers in the background.
Kristine Froseth in a scene from Lena Dunham’s “Sharp Stick.”
(Utopia)

Good day! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to a different version of your common discipline information to a world of Solely Good Motion pictures.

“The Brown Bunny” surfaces. This Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the New Beverly can have what at the moment are very uncommon screenings of writer-director-star Vincent Gallo’s 2003 movie, “The Brown Bunny.” On the time, the movie was considerably overshadowed by its assorted controversies, together with its specific intercourse scene, in addition to the evolving responses of critics to Gallo’s contentious and contrarian media persona. Now the movie is ripe for reevaluation as a painfully earnest and susceptible exploration of grief and remorse. The screenings are bought out, however followers would possibly discover it price grabbing a spot within the standby line to see a movie that isn't prone to present publicly once more anytime quickly.

Ron Shelton and “Bull Durham.” The veteran filmmaker just lately printed “The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham,” a behind-the-scenes have a look at his beloved 1988 film a few Minor League Baseball group. The movie starred Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. It was initially handed on by each studio in Hollywood (twice, in keeping with Shelton) earlier than finally changing into a field workplace hit, incomes an Oscar nomination for Shelton’s screenplay and being thought of among the many finest sports activities films of all time.

Ryan Faughnder spoke to Shelton, who stated, “I’m open with my criticism of the enterprise. On the similar time, I like and embrace the enterprise. I’m a part of this world. I believe there are issues to be taught in regards to the inventive course of, in regards to the willfulness and serendipity concerned. That’s why I've slightly tiny little bit of memoir within the e-book, as a result of every thing that I share results in the screenplay and onscreen. It’s a connection between life and artwork. Possibly that’s what the purpose of the e-book is.”

Early Baz. For anybody who desires to revisit extra of Baz Luhrmann’s razzle-dazzle type after his current “Elvis,” on Saturday the Academy Museum will display archival 35 mm prints of the Australian filmmaker’s 1992 debut, “Strictly Ballroom,” and his frenetic 1996 adaptation of “Romeo + Juliet,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

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‘Sharp Stick’

Written and directed by Lena Dunham, “Sharp Stick” is her first function movie since her 2010 breakthrough debut, “Tiny Furnishings,” and the cultural phenomenon that was her collection “Women.” The brand new movie explores the sexual awakening of 26-year-old Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), who lives together with her mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and sister (Taylour Paige) whereas working as a caregiver to the son of a troubled couple (Dunham, Jon Bernthal). The movie is in restricted launch.

When the movie premiered earlier this 12 months at Sundance, The Occasions’ Amy Kaufman led a dialog with Dunham, Froseth, Bernthal, Paige and Leigh. Of engaged on a set with all-female division heads, Leigh stated, “There’s simply an easy method of speaking that’s generally even nonverbal. You don’t even understand the distinction, however you're feeling it. It simply infuses the set. There’s an ease and an openness, I believe, that’s totally different. It’s a really protected feeling.”

For the New York Occasions, Amy Nicholson known as the movie “an uneven, uneasy fable of want,” earlier than including, “One in every of Dunham’s abilities is her potential to seize the attract of heartbreakers, scuzzballs and dopes. … Watching Sarah Jo’s repeated hallucinations of a cartoon lady mating and giving beginning, one can think about Dunham whispering to the viewers that moments of awkward, sloppy intimacy aren’t shameful — they’re the muse of human existence.”

For Slate, Dana Stevens wrote, “In its fundamental story construction — a long-repressed lady goes on an at-first hesitant, then liberating voyage of self-discovery — ‘Sharp Stick’ just isn't not like one other current launch, ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.’ However the place that (far superior) film locations its sixtysomething heroine in a social context that makes her lack of expertise believable, Dunham merely asks us to simply accept a set of self-contradictory truths about her a lot youthful protagonist. … Dunham’s provocations right here really feel as unsubtle because the pokey implement of the title. This compulsively frank writer-director, who generally seems to be exploring her personal transgressive fantasies, stays a singular determine on the cultural panorama. However ‘Sharp Stick’ is much less a film than a symptom, a tangle of would-be feminist concepts that, allow us to hope, wanted to be gotten out of its creator’s system so she may get again to creating one thing good.”

For Vulture, Alison Willmore wrote, “Lena Dunham has been a connoisseur of dangerous intercourse for therefore lengthy in her work that it’s borderline stunning to find her new movie ‘Sharp Stick’ is a few lady on a constructive, if bumpy, journey of erotic self-discovery. … ‘Sharp Stick’ lurches from factor to factor — the final act introduces a porn star performed by Scott Speedman and an unflappable would-be suitor performed by Luka Sabbat — which retains it unpredictable, but in addition leaves it feeling prefer it’s simply discovering its footing when it ends. It has the air of a television-show fragment, and never simply because its preliminary entanglement feels just like the stuff of a pilot, one thing that needs to be gotten out of the best way to succeed in the precise premise.”

Three adults and a child sit around a dining room table in a house with large light-filled windows.
Jon Bernthal, from left, director-star Lena Dunham, Liam Michel Saux and Kristine Froseth in “Sharp Stick.”
(Utopia)

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‘A Love Track’

Written and directed by Max Walker-Silverman in his debut function, “A Love Track” gives a showcase for 2 beloved character actors, Dale Dickey and Wes Studi. Dickey performs Faye, who despatched an invite to her childhood good friend Lito (Studi) in hopes he would be part of her at a lakeside campsite. Then she waits. The movie is in theaters now.

For The Occasions, Justin Chang wrote, “‘A Love Track’ has the narrative financial system and the sneaky emotional energy of a well-crafted quick story, plus a really feel for isolation and rootlessness that harks again to a number of the nice drifter portraits of American unbiased cinema. It’s a testomony to the lyricism that Walker-Silverman conjures right here that I generally wished he would sluggish his narrative roll even additional, immersing us much more deeply within the story’s quotidian rhythms. As it's, there’s a brisk comedian snap to the enhancing (by the director and Affonso Gonçalves), which regularly cuts quickly between faces and objects inside a scene, and an occasional over-reliance on arch, symmetrically framed sight gags. They carry a smile to your face, however in addition they impose a man-made sense of order that's fortunately dissolved by Dickey’s efficiency, so rough-hewn in its magnificence and so evocative of a life lived outdoors the traces.”

For the New York Occasions, Jeannette Catsoulis wrote, “Sluggish, candy and subdued, ‘A Love Track,’ Max Walker-Silverman’s beautiful first function, is about late-life longing and desires that by no means utterly go away. Constructing strong characters from mere scraps of data (Faye was as soon as a bush pilot, Lito a musician), the 2 leads embrace a screenplay (by the director) stuffed with lengthy silences and looking close-ups. Plaintive nation songs leak from Faye’s transistor radio as she research hen species by day and the constellations by night time — scenes that inform us this isn't somebody who is just present. She’s dwelling and studying.”

For Rolling Stone, David Concern wrote, “Dale Dickey and Wes Studi have, between the 2 of them, over 100 credited roles in TV and films, and much more stolen scenes embedded inside these tasks; decades-old or not, the phrase “character actor” may have been invented for them. … They not often get the highlight, nonetheless, and to look at these two veterans infuse a way of life lived, one stuffed with heartbreak and fading happiness, into Faye and Lito is to be reminded why these ‘smaller,’ Indiewood-type movies stay so very important to well-balanced cinematic diets. The interaction between the 2 of them, with every gingerly attempting to attach after so a few years aside and threat even the dimmest spark being resuscitated, provides the low-key story a way of excessive stakes.”

A man and a woman play guitar outdoors near a field. He sits in the rear of an open hatchback car.
Wes Studi, left, and Dale Dickey in “A Love Track.”
(Bleecker Avenue)

‘Vengeance’

B.J. Novak, finest recognized for his half on “The Workplace,” makes his function debut as writer-director with “Vengeance,” by which he additionally stars as Ben, a magazine author from New York Metropolis who finds himself deep in small-town Texas engaged on a podcast in regards to the unexplained demise of Abilene (Lio Tipton), whom he briefly knew. With a supporting solid that features Ashton Kutcher, Issa Rae and Boyd Holbrook, the film is in theaters now.

For The Occasions, Katie Walsh wrote, “In ‘Vengeance’ Novak’s linguistic blade is concurrently incisive and skewering. He indicts Ben’s pretension and the craven method he seeks to extract Abilene’s story for his personal acquire, inspecting the media’s position within the ‘tradition wars,’ and the socially constructed divisions in our nation. However the movie manages to land someplace between bitter and honest, as Ben makes significant connections with each Abi’s household, and Abi’s story, discovering the center in any case. As Ben does, so does Novak, unearthing some profound truths, wrapped in comedy, about America proper now, too.”

Josh Rottenberg spoke to Novak and Kutcher in regards to the movie. Novak mentioned how the position he wrote for himself was a method of checking a few of his personal flaws, saying, “I had these blind spots and that shallowness and ambition. I used to be somebody who needed possibly to speak greater than pay attention, who needed to inform an important story greater than he needed to search out an important story or inform another person’s story that wanted to be instructed. It was laborious to point out the edges of myself I don’t like. It’s additionally laborious to be earnest about discovering some good in individuals and even in your self.”

For the New York Occasions, A.O. Scott wrote, “Novak, who wrote and directed the film, has his personal ideas about America, subtler than Ben’s however not essentially any extra convincing. ‘Vengeance,’ whereas earnest, considerate and fairly humorous in spots, demonstrates simply how tough it may be to show political polarization and culture-war hostility into a reputable narrative. Its efforts shouldn’t be dismissed, though it’s in the end too intelligent for its personal good, and possibly not fairly as sensible because it thinks it's.”

For IndieWire, David Ehrlich wrote, “Think about ‘Below the Silver Lake’ remade as a crowd-pleasing section of ‘This American Life’ and also you’ll have a tough thought as to how ‘Vengeance’ unfolds from there, as our not-so-humble narrator begins to look below the floor of our hopelessly divided nation and see past his personal shadow for the primary time in his life. The discoveries lower each methods. Not solely does the Shaw household defy Ben’s condescending expectations for such purple state folks, however listening to them discuss — recorder all the time in hand — opens his thoughts to issues he by no means realized about his personal place on the earth.”

Two men, one in a cowboy hat, talk inside a house with large windows.
Ashton Kutcher, left, and B.J. Novak in “Vengeance.”
(Patti Perret / Focus Options)

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