I saw eight movies at IFFBoston 2024; here are reviews of the first four.
JANET PLANET
As seen in a cold open too wickedly good to spoil here, pre-teen angst has served bespectacled 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Zeigler) well, or at least to the point where she has her single mother (Julianne Nicholson) delicately wrapped around her finger. Moody but forthright, she spends the summer in their Western Massachusetts home in the woods carefully tending after a menagerie of little figurines, camped out in the front of the TV set and mostly taking her piano lessons seriously. Meanwhile, her mother becomes involved with three people to varying degrees, including a haunted divorcee (Will Patton), an old friend (Sophie Okenedo) and a pretentious cult guru (Elias Koteas!)
Nicholson is terrific as usual but Ziegler is a real find along the lines of Elsie Fisher in Eighth Grade. Somehow both mousy and poised, Lacy is a unique but wholly believable character. Credit should also go to writer/director Annie Baker, an esteemed playwright making her film debut. Set in 1991, this inevitably feels like it could be autobiographical (Park also hails from where it’s set) but what’s striking is how it uncovers so much nuance in its internal, seeking, near-deadpan approach. Little about the film feels forced or false and yet it doesn’t feel like many other films, allowing for hints of magical realism deployed with an unusually subtle touch. While not necessarily a “lessons learned” type of coming of age story, Janet Planet nonetheless tracks a pivotal summer in its protagonist’s life, leaving her at a crossroads as to whether her angst is at all worth retaining. Grade: A-
GHOSTLIGHT
It feels like a sitcom-friendly setup at first: gruff, middle-aged construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) stumbles his way into participating in a community theater production of “Romeo and Juliet” and discovers a talent for acting he never knew he had. That he’s also grieving over the recent death of a family member whose demise eerily ties into the play’s narrative is what elevates Ghostlight into something richer and darker; it would also seem ridiculously coincidental if not for Kupferer’s convincing presence (he’s mostly known as a Chicago-based stage actor) or a screenplay that withholds and reveals at the most appropriate moments.
Co-directed by couple Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson (who respectively starred in and directed Saint Frances a few years back), the film also benefits from casting Kupferer’s actual wife (Tara Mallen) and daughter (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) as his onscreen family–all three are more than up to the challenge of effortlessly recreating their real-life chemistry together. Dolly de Leon (Triangle of Sadness) is also a hoot as the irascible community theater player who encourages Dan to come into the fold. Truthfully, the film takes its time to get to a place where it finally makes a desired impact, even if it ends up somewhat mirroring that lengthy process all actors and theater troupes go through in preparing for opening night. B+
GASOLINE RAINBOW
Five teenagers set out from Nowheresville, Oregon in a worn-down van to make the 500+ mile trek to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, they chill out, toke up, run into obstacles (including a fairly major one) and meet a variety of similar transients and loners along the way. It almost sounds like a group Gen Z equivalent of the road trip Lily Gladstone took in The Unknown Country except that it feels more casual and like a documentary. Given that this is directed by the Ross Brothers, it’s probably not the latter, liberally bending the real/fake line as they did in some of their past films, most notably 2020’s last-night-of-a-dive-bar reverie Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets. Unfortunately, this doesn’t retain the momentum or the interesting “characters” of that triumph and goes on for a little too long. There are great moments scattered throughout–the hopping of a freight train, a massive bonfire on a beach–but as a coming of age portrait of friends on the cusp of adulthood, it has nothing on something fully scripted/fictionalized like Dazed and Confused. B
MY OLD ASS
18-year-old Elliot (Maisy Stella) celebrates her birthday with her two best friends by taking magic mushrooms on a camping trip in the woods; while all three experience hallucinations, only Elliot’s manifests in the form of her future 39-year-old self, played by Aubrey Plaza. A promising premise for sure, but if you’re expecting a Charlie Kaufman or Michel Gondry-esque mind warp, note that this is simply an earnest Canadian film not without a few plot holes that gets most of its mileage out of a game Plaza. In my opinion, one can never have too much Plaza but as the focus shifts back to Stella, there’s simply not enough Plaza to go around even if what’s there is golden. Still, Megan Park’s film gets points for its relaxed approach to Elliot’s fluid sexuality as she questions her attraction to Chad (Percy Hynes White), an affable doofus whom her older self warns her to stay away from. B-
Haunted Jukebox 