Julie, a single mother of two played by Laure Calamy, lives in the Parisian suburbs but works tirelessly as the head housemaid for a five-star hotel located in the heart of Paris. Her daily routine begins by waking up the children and gathering herself for a lengthy, claustrophobic commute. Once she drops the children off with her discontented neighbor Madame Lusigny, played by Geneviève Mnich, Julie’s hectic morning has only just started. She rushes to work in a frenetic sequence of trains and buses, crammed with fellow commuters, and when she finally arrives at work, responsibilities swallow the remainder of her time. But Julie plans to secure a higher-paying job that would liberate her from this unyielding routine. With zero flexibility in Julie’s schedule, Full Time rapidly transforms into a subtle, adrenaline-packed horror film as her routine crumbles in the face of city-wide transit strikes.

Full Time delivers an unnerving, familiar story about our mundane routines. Director Eric Gravel’s film is a panic-inducing, hyper-realist thriller with the commute starring as its harrowing villain. The film draws attention to the mounting stress that accompanies change by showing the complete breakdown of Julie’s job and travel security. Simultaneously, Julie attempts to impress a new company, hide her intentions from her current bosses, and care for her children’s travel without reliable transportation. Although it feels strange that the film ignores the details of the transit strike, this generates a heightened sense of futility. What can we do when infrastructure breaks down? Gravel expertly captures the panic that occurs alongside displacement. Not to mention, Calamy delivers a wonderfully sympathetic and complicated performance as Julie. Despite lacking depth about the strikes themselves, Full Time offers a personal commentary situated against capitalism’s anchors, and to this capacity, the film succeeds in showing how people struggle under the weight of their occupations and debt. 88 min.

Music Box Theatre

Read More

Julie, a single mother of two played by Laure Calamy, lives in the Parisian suburbs but works tirelessly as the head housemaid for a five-star hotel located in the heart of Paris. Her daily routine begins by waking up the children and gathering herself for a lengthy, claustrophobic commute. Once she drops the children off with her discontented neighbor Madame Lusigny, played by Geneviève Mnich, Julie’s hectic morning has only just started. She rushes to work in a frenetic sequence of trains and buses, crammed with fellow commuters, and when she finally arrives at work, responsibilities swallow the remainder of her time. But Julie plans to secure a higher-paying job that would liberate her from this unyielding routine. With zero flexibility in Julie’s schedule, Full Time rapidly transforms into a subtle, adrenaline-packed horror film as her routine crumbles in the face of city-wide transit strikes.

Full Time delivers an unnerving, familiar story about our mundane routines. Director Eric Gravel’s film is a panic-inducing, hyper-realist thriller with the commute starring as its harrowing villain. The film draws attention to the mounting stress that accompanies change by showing the complete breakdown of Julie’s job and travel security. Simultaneously, Julie attempts to impress a new company, hide her intentions from her current bosses, and care for her children’s travel without reliable transportation. Although it feels strange that the film ignores the details of the transit strike, this generates a heightened sense of futility. What can we do when infrastructure breaks down? Gravel expertly captures the panic that occurs alongside displacement. Not to mention, Calamy delivers a wonderfully sympathetic and complicated performance as Julie. Despite lacking depth about the strikes themselves, Full Time offers a personal commentary situated against capitalism’s anchors, and to this capacity, the film succeeds in showing how people struggle under the weight of their occupations and debt. 88 min.

Music Box Theatre

Read More

“Delhi is a gaping wound,” says Mohammad Saud in director Shaunak Sen’s Oscar-nominated documentary All That Breathes. The documentary opens at night, fixed on a horde of rats racing across an otherwise arid wasteland. For longer than expected, Sen leaves the audience with the vermin before introducing the skies, narrowing in on the black kite—a beautiful raptor essential to the city’s increasingly unstable ecosystem. Across the city, the black kites carry a reputation as a scavenger, subsisting on the city’s mountainous landfills, but despite this, Saud and his brother Nadeem Shehzad revere these birds. The brothers devote their lives to protecting these birds, working tirelessly to shield them from Delhi’s pollutants and healing thousands of injured birds in their infirmary. Despite the job’s thanklessness, the brothers have saved nearly 25,000 black kites. 

All That Breathes documents Saud and Shehzad’s devotion to the black kites, exploring the bird’s invaluable role in Delhi, but Sen composes a far more intimate narrative of the two brothers. The documentary, condensed into 90ish minutes from about 400 hours of rough rootage, captures a gentle, touching story of two brothers bound together by a similar devotion. However, Saud feels content working with Delhi and Shehzad hopes to leave for the United States to learn more and return with more knowledge. Saud views this as abandonment. The tension simmers as Salik—a volunteer enamored by the black kites—attends to the injured birds with a touching graciousness. All That Breathes teeters on the brink of sentimentality but never extends further than brief glances, because the unrelenting task of protecting Delhi’s fragile ecosystem remains. 

Sen captures a compassionate microcosm in the infirmary, persisting despite the intensifying sectarian violence and the collapsing Delhi ecosystem happening outside. All That Breathes presents a poetic, intensely beautiful story so precise that, at times, it feels staged but instead emerges from hours of painstaking care. And this film emphasizes the importance of that seemingly mundane yet infinitely important sensitivity, in spite of social, fraternal, environmental, or quotidian strains. 97 min.

HBO Max

Read More

“Delhi is a gaping wound,” says Mohammad Saud in director Shaunak Sen’s Oscar-nominated documentary All That Breathes. The documentary opens at night, fixed on a horde of rats racing across an otherwise arid wasteland. For longer than expected, Sen leaves the audience with the vermin before introducing the skies, narrowing in on the black kite—a beautiful raptor essential to the city’s increasingly unstable ecosystem. Across the city, the black kites carry a reputation as a scavenger, subsisting on the city’s mountainous landfills, but despite this, Saud and his brother Nadeem Shehzad revere these birds. The brothers devote their lives to protecting these birds, working tirelessly to shield them from Delhi’s pollutants and healing thousands of injured birds in their infirmary. Despite the job’s thanklessness, the brothers have saved nearly 25,000 black kites. 

All That Breathes documents Saud and Shehzad’s devotion to the black kites, exploring the bird’s invaluable role in Delhi, but Sen composes a far more intimate narrative of the two brothers. The documentary, condensed into 90ish minutes from about 400 hours of rough rootage, captures a gentle, touching story of two brothers bound together by a similar devotion. However, Saud feels content working with Delhi and Shehzad hopes to leave for the United States to learn more and return with more knowledge. Saud views this as abandonment. The tension simmers as Salik—a volunteer enamored by the black kites—attends to the injured birds with a touching graciousness. All That Breathes teeters on the brink of sentimentality but never extends further than brief glances, because the unrelenting task of protecting Delhi’s fragile ecosystem remains. 

Sen captures a compassionate microcosm in the infirmary, persisting despite the intensifying sectarian violence and the collapsing Delhi ecosystem happening outside. All That Breathes presents a poetic, intensely beautiful story so precise that, at times, it feels staged but instead emerges from hours of painstaking care. And this film emphasizes the importance of that seemingly mundane yet infinitely important sensitivity, in spite of social, fraternal, environmental, or quotidian strains. 97 min.

HBO Max

Read More

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will be a blockbuster due to its amazing cast, outstanding special effects, and family-friendly fare replete with enough funny lines and cameos to keep people entertained. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is back, riding his fame after saving the world with the Avengers in Avengers: Endgame (2019). But when his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) designs a radio to the quantum realm, the family all get zapped into a fantastical world populated with Oz-meets-Star-Wars-category creatures and delightfully mind-bending visuals. But what makes the Ant-Man franchise great is seeing him and Wasp traverse our world with their shrinking/growing tech. Instead, the whole film takes place in the green-screen world of the quantum realm; it’s heavy on the visuals with a fairly light, predictable Marvel story. We meet tons of creatures we want to know but barely learn anything about. Hope Van Dyne AKA Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) barely has a role and instead the film puts Cassie front and center along with Janet Van Dyne, the original Wasp (Michelle Pfeiffer), who somehow lived a full, crazy life as a “freedom fighter” in the realm for 30 years but has yet to tell anyone in the family anything about it, like the universe-threatening Kang The Conqueror (a terrifyingly excellent Jonathan Majors) or the entire reality of living creatures in the quantum realm. Corey Stoll makes an underwhelming anticipated appearance as M.O.D.O.K (if you know, you know), and post-credit scenes hint at a more interesting storyline to come. PG-13, 125 min.

Wide release in theaters

Read More

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will be a blockbuster due to its amazing cast, outstanding special effects, and family-friendly fare replete with enough funny lines and cameos to keep people entertained. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is back, riding his fame after saving the world with the Avengers in Avengers: Endgame (2019). But when his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) designs a radio to the quantum realm, the family all get zapped into a fantastical world populated with Oz-meets-Star-Wars-category creatures and delightfully mind-bending visuals. But what makes the Ant-Man franchise great is seeing him and Wasp traverse our world with their shrinking/growing tech. Instead, the whole film takes place in the green-screen world of the quantum realm; it’s heavy on the visuals with a fairly light, predictable Marvel story. We meet tons of creatures we want to know but barely learn anything about. Hope Van Dyne AKA Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) barely has a role and instead the film puts Cassie front and center along with Janet Van Dyne, the original Wasp (Michelle Pfeiffer), who somehow lived a full, crazy life as a “freedom fighter” in the realm for 30 years but has yet to tell anyone in the family anything about it, like the universe-threatening Kang The Conqueror (a terrifyingly excellent Jonathan Majors) or the entire reality of living creatures in the quantum realm. Corey Stoll makes an underwhelming anticipated appearance as M.O.D.O.K (if you know, you know), and post-credit scenes hint at a more interesting storyline to come. PG-13, 125 min.

Wide release in theaters

Read More

Julie, a single mother of two played by Laure Calamy, lives in the Parisian suburbs but works tirelessly as the head housemaid for a five-star hotel located in the heart of Paris. Her daily routine begins by waking up the children and gathering herself for a lengthy, claustrophobic commute. Once she drops the children off with her discontented neighbor Madame Lusigny, played by Geneviève Mnich, Julie’s hectic morning has only just started. She rushes to work in a frenetic sequence of trains and buses, crammed with fellow commuters, and when she finally arrives at work, responsibilities swallow the remainder of her time. But Julie plans to secure a higher-paying job that would liberate her from this unyielding routine. With zero flexibility in Julie’s schedule, Full Time rapidly transforms into a subtle, adrenaline-packed horror film as her routine crumbles in the face of city-wide transit strikes.

Full Time delivers an unnerving, familiar story about our mundane routines. Director Eric Gravel’s film is a panic-inducing, hyper-realist thriller with the commute starring as its harrowing villain. The film draws attention to the mounting stress that accompanies change by showing the complete breakdown of Julie’s job and travel security. Simultaneously, Julie attempts to impress a new company, hide her intentions from her current bosses, and care for her children’s travel without reliable transportation. Although it feels strange that the film ignores the details of the transit strike, this generates a heightened sense of futility. What can we do when infrastructure breaks down? Gravel expertly captures the panic that occurs alongside displacement. Not to mention, Calamy delivers a wonderfully sympathetic and complicated performance as Julie. Despite lacking depth about the strikes themselves, Full Time offers a personal commentary situated against capitalism’s anchors, and to this capacity, the film succeeds in showing how people struggle under the weight of their occupations and debt. 88 min.

Music Box Theatre

Read More

Julie, a single mother of two played by Laure Calamy, lives in the Parisian suburbs but works tirelessly as the head housemaid for a five-star hotel located in the heart of Paris. Her daily routine begins by waking up the children and gathering herself for a lengthy, claustrophobic commute. Once she drops the children off with her discontented neighbor Madame Lusigny, played by Geneviève Mnich, Julie’s hectic morning has only just started. She rushes to work in a frenetic sequence of trains and buses, crammed with fellow commuters, and when she finally arrives at work, responsibilities swallow the remainder of her time. But Julie plans to secure a higher-paying job that would liberate her from this unyielding routine. With zero flexibility in Julie’s schedule, Full Time rapidly transforms into a subtle, adrenaline-packed horror film as her routine crumbles in the face of city-wide transit strikes.

Full Time delivers an unnerving, familiar story about our mundane routines. Director Eric Gravel’s film is a panic-inducing, hyper-realist thriller with the commute starring as its harrowing villain. The film draws attention to the mounting stress that accompanies change by showing the complete breakdown of Julie’s job and travel security. Simultaneously, Julie attempts to impress a new company, hide her intentions from her current bosses, and care for her children’s travel without reliable transportation. Although it feels strange that the film ignores the details of the transit strike, this generates a heightened sense of futility. What can we do when infrastructure breaks down? Gravel expertly captures the panic that occurs alongside displacement. Not to mention, Calamy delivers a wonderfully sympathetic and complicated performance as Julie. Despite lacking depth about the strikes themselves, Full Time offers a personal commentary situated against capitalism’s anchors, and to this capacity, the film succeeds in showing how people struggle under the weight of their occupations and debt. 88 min.

Music Box Theatre

Read More