REVIEW: Madeline’s Madeline [2018]

This is just a metaphor. One of the worst things you can be told as a child is how brilliant you are. Parents and mentors love to throw this sort of blanket praise out with promises that everything will work out for you without thinking about the ramifications of what such a falsely optimistic indoctrination devoid of realism can wield. How do you cope when failure occurs? How do you handle a response from those you trust similar to: “They’re going to regret their mistake because you are perfect?” Oftentimes…

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REVIEW: Thou Wast Mild & Lovely [2014]

“My lover knows how to love me” She is not kidding when she says: “To those who feel that their cruelty is too cruel, their sadness too sad, I dedicate this film: an embrace.” Writer/director Josephine Decker means every single word because she herself has laid bare her own cruelty and sadness with Thou Wast Mild & Lovely. Her characters are flawed, dangerous, and inviting—animals working the farm yet animals just the same. They each desire, take, and enjoy, suffering the psychological consequences after the fact, unregretful for what they’ve…

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REVIEW: Butter on the Latch [2014]

“Because she sat on Pinocchio’s head” I’m going to run with this quote from director Josephine Decker: “I think an ending is much more exciting if even I don’t know what it ‘means’.” For all intents and purposes she’s giving permission for me to make of her fiction narrative feature debut Butter on the Latch whatever I want. What’s real? What isn’t? That’s up to my own personal understanding of her lead character Sarah (Sarah Small) and what occurs to her during this nightmarish descent inside herself. Honestly, isn’t that…

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