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: Sparrows Dance [2013]

“You can’t let someone else’s genius scare you off your own genius” It only seems appropriate that I reviewed a romantic comedy yesterday where I posited its derivativeness to be a direct result of the genre simply having been exhausted beyond originality. Who knew a film like Noah Buschel’s Sparrows Dance would surprise me today by proving this thought wrong? Perhaps it isn’t the genre that has become stale, but instead the audience flocking to theatres for the same hamfisted love conquers all story repackaged ad infinitum by Hollywood. Luckily…

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