‘Movie Corner’ Archives
Janet Planet
from the series Movie Corner A24 Films, Compliments of the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival By Howard McQuitter II Howard McQuitter II Annie Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for writing The Flick and her directing debut film is Janet Planet. I will regretfully say, watching Janet Planet is more than a challenge and uncompelling to say the least.I can also comment that the film takes place in a picturesque New England in 1991, when a single mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and her very manipulative, eleven-year-old daughter, Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) live in a cabin. Lacy is not enjoying summer camp so she tells her mother if she doesn’t come and get her, she will kill herself. The girl has already lied to the camp leaders by saying her mother’s boyfriend had been in a car accident and is dying. A24 As for Janet, she seems to go through three transitory relationships. First, she has a slow-witted, weird boyfriend, Wayne (Will Patton) who looks like he [...]
Movie Corner: Limbo
5/5 Stars Music Box/Brainstorm Media, Compliments of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival 43 Crime/ Mystery/Drama/Thriller By HOWARD MCQUITTER II Howard McQuitter II The outback in South Australia is photographed in spectacular black and white in the film Limbo that richly deserves wider release. Limbo is a fictional town, at one time a mining and tourist place.The film opens up with Travis Harley (Simon Baker), a weary, middle-aged detective, driving into Limbo to investigate a missing young Indigenous woman from 20 years ago, Charlotte Hayes. He stays at the town’s only motel: Limbo Motel. A good part of the motel is inside a cave. While he’s in his motel room, Travis melts down an unidentified opioid drug in a spoon and shoots up in his arm with a hypodermic needle. Heroin or fentanyl, or something else, the viewers do not know. (Director Ivan Sen’s Limbo is eerily similar to John Sturges’ 1955 Bad Day at Black Rock.)The first potential [...]
Movie Corner: One Life
Howard McQuitter II 4.5/5 Stars Bleeker Street Drama/Biography By HOWARD MCQUITTER II Saving a life (or lives) from death or injury just may be the most principled act one can do on Earth. One such concern for saving lives from certain death is the story of Nicholas “Nicky” Winton (played by Johnny Flynn as a young man and Anthony Hopkins as an old man). Nicky is a young London broker on a visit to Prague, Czechoslovakia (now known as The Czech Republic), saving children, mostly Jewish, from extermination at Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Bleeker Street Mr. Winton risks his life orchestrating a way for the children to get to the United Kingdom (UK) or even beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. The men, women and children are refugees from Germany and Austria who are uncertain about their destiny. Winton had arrived in Prague in December 1938, in Sudentenland, just shortly after Hitler occupied Sudentenland. Winton’s task is herculean [...]
