FANTASIA21 REVIEW: Giving Birth to a Butterfly [2021]

It’s the awe that I want. We meet Diana Dent (Annie Parisse) readying matching wedding gowns soon revealed as not her own. She’s mending them to sell online—a necessity considering her bull-headed and controlling husband Daryl (Paul Sparks) is hell-bent on putting their life savings towards a dream of creating his own restaurant. That means no money for Drew (Owen Campbell) or Danielle’s (Rachel Resheff) college. No money to stop working extra hours at the pharmacy. No money for anything besides his selfish need to break free of a constrained…

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REVIEW: Plan B [2021]

There are no ‘smart‘ mistakes. It was about halfway through Natalie Morales‘ Plan B (her directorial debut if you go by theatrical release date considering her festival title Language Lessons from earlier this year has yet to secure one) that Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg‘s producer credits came into focus because it was there that the parallels to Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle became undeniable. If actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde‘s Booksmart was created in the Superbad vein, Joshua Levy and Prathiksha Srinivasan‘s script was certainly drawn from that of…

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REVIEW: Here and Now [2018]

First a tragedy. Then a miracle. The news ain’t good. Famed vocalist Vivienne Carala (Sarah Jessica Parker) is on the cusp of a world tour for her latest (and ninth) album only to find herself in a hospital waiting room calling her manager (Common‘s Ben) to say she’s going to be late for rehearsal. She is to celebrate her twenty-fifth anniversary of playing at Birdland with multiple concerts beginning the very next day, an auspicious occasion even her well-known French mother Jeanne (Jacqueline Bisset) has decided to attend. And yet…

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