This week I am recommending a new Chicago-set coming-of-age drama, a pandemic-set satire, one of my favorite films of the year now on streaming, a peak 2000s romantic comedy, two films from Josephine Decker, and a short poetic Palestinian documentary.
Set in the 1990s, Minhal Baig’s We Grown Now centers on two boys, Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez), who have been friends as long as they can remember. Growing up in Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green housing project, the two see life as an adventure, but also are beginning to see its mortal dangers as well. When Malik’s mother (Jurnee Smollett) applies for a higher paying job in another city, the two boys realize their time together might soon come to an end. There are some dazzling moments in the film that show Baig still has a clear-eyed remembrance of the dizzying heights of childhood when everything was new and fresh and worth exploring. A sequence filmed inside the Art Institute truly took my breath away. Writing for RogerEbert.com Peyton Robinson says the film is, “masterfully tied to the emotive potential of place.” Writing for Screen Daily, Robert called the film “an unassuming character study set to poetic rhythms makes for an empathetic study of Black life, full of resolve.” He also had a long conversation with Baig as two native Chicagoans, which you can read here. The film is opening today at Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, Film Forum in New York City, and AMC Century City and Cinemark Baldwin Hills in Los Angeles. It will be opening nationwide on May 10th. You can learn more about the film here.
I saw Theda Hammel’s Stress Positions at Sundance earlier this year and while I did chuckle a bit, it definitely felt way too New York for me. Which, to be fair, is the point of the film as it is a satire of a certain kind of Brooklynite. So while the film wasn’t really for me, I think it will probably make a lot of people laugh in recognition (of themselves, or people they know.) For a more positive take on the film, I love what Juan Barquin wrote about it for Reverse Shot. Set during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the stressed out Brooklynite Terry (John Early) hosts his Moroccan American nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash) as he recovers from a broken leg. Wacky neighbors and other disasters abound. The film is currently playing at Landmark theaters in Chicago and Los Angeles and the IFC Center in New York City, and will be platforming to other cities over the next few weeks. You can find tickets and showtimes here.
I wrote about Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex back when it hit theaters in February, but now that it is streaming on Mubi I just wanted to recommend it again because it’s one of my favorite films of the year. Also, if you haven’t yet, do check out my interview with Walker as well.
I unabashedly love Anne Fletcher’s mid-2000s rom-com 27 Dresses. Sometimes I will revisit movies from this era that I loved when I was younger and think “oh god what was I thinking?!,” but I recently rewatched this one with Robert and still loved it just as much as ever. One-time rom-com queen Katherine Heigl plays Jane, a wedding-obsessed personal assistant who is secretly in love with her do-gooder entrepreneur boss George (Edward Burns) who himself falls hard for her vapid little sister Tess (Malin Åkerman). When she agrees to plan their wedding she also has to resist her attraction to cynical writer Kevin (James Marsden; charm city king) who claims he’s writing up the wedding, but is secretly writing a feature about perennial bridesmaid Jane (and her titular 27 dresses!) Also Judy Greer does what she best chewing scenery and stealing scenes as Jane’s acerbic best friend Casey. Warning: “Bennie And The Jets” will be stuck in your head for days. You can stream the film now on Netflix.
I saw that Josephine Decker’s excellent adult fairytale Thou Was Mild & Lovely was streaming on Kanopy and feel like it is a perfect film for the fresh pleasures of Spring. The film stars Joe Swanberg as Akin, a hired worker on a farmer with a secret past. As he spends more time with the reclusive farmer Jeremiah (Robert Longstreet) and his earthy daughter Sarah (Sophie Traub), Akin realizes he may have gotten in a bit over his head. I spoke in depth about this film with Decker for my forthcoming book Cinema Her Way (pre-order link maaaaaybe coming soon), so consider this homework!
I also saw that Decker’s little cityscape fantasia Me The Terrible is expiring on Criterion Channel at the end of the month, and I cannot recommend it enough. It is so fun! The New Yorker’s Richard Brody wrote a great summation of this little gem of a film a few years ago:
The transformation of practical problems into dreams and back again blends simple heartbreak and cosmic wonder, while an indifferent and bewildering world of adults crashes into the girl’s own desperate pursuits (as in a spare but furious chase scene, on bicycles, which yields plenty of drama from almost nothing). In a deft concluding masterstroke, Decker reveals the dark ambiguities of a child’s imagination and its totems.
This week’s pick from the Palestine Film Index is visual artist Noor Abuarafeh’s The Moon is a Sun Returning as a Ghost. The film follows a group of paintings by Palestinian artists on their journey from the small Swiss town of Martigny, where they had been part of an exhibit that took place in 2005, to their current location in a London warehouse. We never actually see the paintings, just glimpses of them in their shipping crates. I read a description of the work that I felt really helped put it into context: “The video highlights how the absence of these objects impacts our recollection of them and suggests that by freeing historiography from its reliance on physical objects, alternative narratives can emerge.” Through her narration Abuarafeh contemplates the nature of memory itself, asking, “I wonder when something disappears or when we lose something, does it become something else in our memories?” These paintings, like their creators, have become refugees from their own land, yet will always be a part of it. You can stream the film here.
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