the little death movie review

The Little Death

The Australian sex comedy “The Little Death” coyly takes its title from the French idiom for orgasm. It toys with the idea of being racy and dabbles in dark humor. Similarly, it flits around several couples struggling with intimacy issues and it meanders between various types of tone.

Basically, it won’t commit.

There is simultaneously too much and not enough going on in writer/director/co-star Josh Lawson ’s feature debut. He crams in too many people and plot lines but offers too little in the way of character development and credible emotion. And he weaves a supposedly hilarious sexual assault thread throughout the proceedings, which may leave you feeling icky.

As we’re introduced to each of the Sydney couples and their sexual fetishes, we begin with Lawson himself and Bojana Novakovic as Paul and Maeve. While awkwardly messing around in the bedroom one night, Maeve informs Paul that she would like him to rape her, a misunderstanding that’s played for uncomfortable laughs. It’s her fantasy, she explains—but she doesn’t want to know for sure that it’s Paul if and when it actually happens. The misguided notion of rape as a source of sexual pleasure, rather than an act of aggression, consistently taints this story line.

Dan ( Damon Herriman ) and Evie ( Kate Mulvany ) also are trying new ways to reignite that spark. They’re just not communicating their needs to each other these days. Their couples therapist suggests a little role playing, which Evie initially has trouble doing with a straight face. But Dan takes this assignment seriously to the extent that he starts thinking he’s a real actor, with increasingly elaborate costumes, props and backstories for his naughty characters. His self-seriousness provides a few laughs here.

Meanwhile, Richard ( Patrick Brammall ) and Rowena ( Kate Box ) are in an even more tenuous position. They’ve been trying methodically to have a baby for the past three years, rendering sex a matter of scheduling rather than spontaneity. (“How’s your cervical mucus?” he asks politely one morning.) But when Richard’s father dies suddenly—and Rowena discovers the sight of him sobbing surprisingly turns her on—she starts finding ways to make him break down and cry to prompt passionate romps. It’s an amusingly twisted concept, but it also results in the darkest of the film’s endings.

The marriage of middle-aged Phil (Alan Dukes) and Maureen ( Lisa McCune ) is in the worst condition of all. He’s a milquetoast corporate drone; she’s a belittling shrew. She consistently rejects his efforts to get frisky. But when Phil realizes that he’s attracted to Maureen when she’s asleep—and quiet, and pliable—he begins drugging her tea at night, then having his way with her. This mostly consists of dressing her up and cuddling, but the idea that she’s being physically manipulated when she’s practically unconscious is also a little queasy-making. 

Lawson bops around between all these couples as their individual fetishes escalate, resulting in a few amusing moments and a lot of jarring tonal shifts. “The Little Death” veers from wacky physical comedy to forced poignancy to tragedy to romance, none of which is ever terribly convincing. Much of the problem lies in the fact that we don’t really know anything about these people outside of these small boxes in which we view them. They’re defined almost exclusively by their relationship problems. When Rowena shows up at Maeve’s house late into the film, and Maeve mentions that they’re longtime friends, it’s like: “Huh? Where did that come from?”

But Lawson also ostensibly aims to tie these stories together with the appearance of a 60ish new neighbor named Steve (Kim Gyngell). He knocks on each of their doors with a friendly smile, homemade cookies and the admission that he’s a registered sex offender, but they’re all too distracted or busy for this piece of information to register. It’s an element that never quite works and has an odd payoff.

The last couple we meet, though, is the most intriguing of all. Monica (Erin James) is an operator for an online video chat service that makes phone calls for the hearing impaired. Sam (T.J. Power) is a deaf man who rings her up in the middle of the night with an unusual request: He’d like her to help him connect with a phone sex operator. The result is hilarious and awkward and sweet, and it allows Monica and Sam to bond quickly and powerfully. This may sound like a contrived meet-cute, but it ends up being the most accessible and charming story of all.

Here, Lawson comes up with a clever concept and executes it effectively. Despite the raunchy, graphic places this segment goes, it wraps up in unexpectedly romantic fashion, and it finally finds the tricky mix of tones that had eluded Lawson all along.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Kate Mulvany as Evie
• Damon Herriman as Dan
• Bojana Novaković as Maeve
• Lisa McCune as Maureen
• Josh Lawson as Paul
• Christian Gazal
• Josh Lawson

Original Music Composer

• Michael Yezerski

Director of Photography

• Simon Chapman

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Review: ‘The Little Death’ Plays With Narrative Form and Fetish

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By Daniel M. Gold

• June 25, 2015

Early on, “ The Little Death ” helpfully explains that its title comes from the French idiom for orgasm. That eagerness to enlighten characterizes this comedy’s gentle, considerate tone. It also underscores why, in the end, the film doesn’t work.

Movies Seek Laughs With All Manner of Sex Scenes

New films are using sex to push boundaries, embarrass audiences and set up jokes.

Written and directed by Josh Lawson, an Australian actor (“ House of Lies ”), “The Little Death” has some dramatic aspirations as well. While pursuing those, it seeks to be naughty, yet largely inoffensive. There’s a niche for a polite sex comedy with the soul of a sitcom, but it hasn’t been a formula for mass appeal since, maybe, “ Three’s Company .”

The movie weaves among five couples in suburban Sydney, Australia, who try to spice up their boring sex lives. Maeve (Bojana Novakovic) confesses to having a rape fantasy, which her boyfriend (Mr. Lawson) tries to fulfill. A husband wishing his overbearing wife would simply quiet down finds stimulation when he slips sleeping pills into her tea.

Elsewhere, a couple is urged to role-play, with predictably mixed results; and a wife who is aroused only when her husband cries keeps staging situations to make him tear up. The only sketch that’s inspired is the final one, and it involves two strangers meeting cute: Monica (Erin James) is an operator at a visual phone service that translates calls for the deaf; Sam (T. J. Power) is a client who needs her help to use a phone-sex line. Between their crude chat and raunchy gestures, the film delivers something close to a happy ending.

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‘little death’ review: david schwimmer in a darren aronofsky-produced film that trips over its own ambitions.

Talia Ryder, Gaby Hoffmann and Dominic Fike co-star in Jack Begert's satire about thwarted ambition.

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Lovia Gyarkye

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Bad bunny joins zoë kravitz, austin butler in darren aronofsky's 'caught stealing', zoë kravitz in talks to join austin butler in darren aronofsky's 'caught stealing', little death.

The film starts off in the highest gear. A voiceover narration coupled with trippy animation considers life’s existential questions and concludes that modern-day living is a trap of prescription drugs and distractions. When the monologue ends, it’s revealed to be a screenplay in progress by Martin, a frustrated creative. After a successful career as a TV writer for a sitcom called The Switch Up, Martin wants to write and, preferably, direct a movie — a depressing project about death, middle-age and thwarted ambition. The first half of Little Death roots itself in Martin’s point of view and experiments with different animation techniques to relay the rhythm of his neurotic mind. 

When Martin’s agents inform him that funding for his project depends on making the protagonist a woman, the writer becomes catatonic. “No one wants to watch a white guy with problems,” they tell him. “Not with this climate.” So the writer tries to imagine his auto-fictional work from a female perspective, and Little Death dials up the weirdness: As Martin talks to his friends David (Seth Green) and Jayson (Ben Feldman) about the anonymous producer’s stipulations, his character, also known as Martin 2.0, is now all of a sudden played by Gaby Hoffmann.

The somewhat trying exercise finally ends when Martin meets a woman (Angela Sarafyan) while picking up a prescription at the pharmacy. He spots her entering the record store across the street and follows her. He’s seen the svelte brunette with piercing eyes in his dreams, and is convinced that she is some mystic figure sent to coddle his bruised ego and be the star of his project.

Ryder, who has consistently proven her ability to carry a film with Never Rarely Sometimes Always and The Sweet East , predictably shines here. Her performance adds a hopeful edge to Karla, turning the character into something more than just a college dropout with addiction issues. Ryder sneaks in touches of optimism — like when she’s flirting with a guy she likes (played by Odd Future’s Travis Bennett) — that show some part of her maintains a will to live. Fike, whose role in Euphoria was flattened into a meme, is similarly strong. In AJ, we sense a kindness and a desperation to prove himself. Fike energizes the character with glimpses of protectiveness for Karla. With this foundation, a critical scene in which Karla and AJ fight lands with real emotional impact. 

As the two friends adventure through Los Angeles, Little Death sheds some of its intellectual posturing for more grounded storytelling. The film becomes more confident and funnier, and more naturally gestures at the themes it announced with such forceful intention at the beginning. We start to invest not just in Karla and AJ’s experiences, but in all the people they meet along the way.

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Review: ‘The Little Death’ arouses interest as much as it disappoints

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No sexual fantasy goes unpunished — or at least greatly mismanaged — in the dark Aussie comedy “The Little Death.” Writer-director-actor Josh Lawson takes on romantic ennui, fetishism, commitment phobia, couples counseling and more with mixed results.

Alternately silly and provocative, strained and funny, the film looks mainly at a quartet of suburban Sydney couples, each at a crossroads in their relationship. The unifying thread: Offbeat sexual measures are seemingly required to fix what’s broken in each pairing.

For the unmarried Paul (Lawson) and Maeve (Bojana Novakovic), it’s fulfilling Maeve’s secret rape fantasy. Dan (Damon Herriman) and wife Evie (Kate Mulvany) get caught up in role-playing. Rowena (Kate Box) finds dubious ways to make hubby Patrick (Patrick Brammall) cry to satisfy her dacryphilia (sobbing as a turn-on). Phil (Alan Dukes) takes to drugging awful wife Maureen (Lisa McCune) into slumber because he’s aroused by watching her sleep. Complications abound for each duo to varying degrees of narrative success.

A late-breaking fifth scenario involves Monica (Erin James), a translator for the deaf staffed at a video relay service, who must act as a go-between for the hearing-impaired Sam (T.J. Power) and an impatient phone sex worker (Genevieve Hegney). The vignette, worthy of its own one-act play, has far more humor and appeal than everything that comes before.

A game cast, including Kim Gyngell as a former sex offender with baking skills, goes a long way in selling Lawson’s hard-working material. Ironic use of such Top 40 throwbacks as “Brand New Key” by Melanie and “Make It With You” by Bread is a fun touch.

As for the winking title, it’s the English translation of a French idiom for “orgasm.”

------------

“The Little Death”

MPAA rating : None

Running time : 1 hour, 36 minutes

Playing : Sundance Sunset Cinemas, West Hollywood. Also on video on demand.

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The Dissolve

June 25, 2015 Reviews

The Little Death

By scott tobias.

A Love Actually for the mildly kinky, Josh Lawson’s The Little Death offers a roundelay of suburban-bedroom subplots, each about the naughty fetishes of couples eager to defibrillate their love life. There’s little to bind these stories together, other than a running joke where a new neighbor hands out racist cookies to smooth over the disclosure that he’s a registered sex offender, leaving the recipients too distracted to pick up on the second part. It’s that kind of movie. Then again, Lawson’s amiable tone makes it hard for the audience to notice the more disturbing turns of his script, or to register any of the kinks, no matter how outrageous, as a flavor other than vanilla. No matter what happens in the film, it goes down as easy as Junior Soprano on Bobbi Sanfillipo, which is both a blessing and a curse for Lawson’s Hollywood-slick romantic comedy. 

The Little Death —derived from “la petite mort,” an annoyingly ubiquitous idiom for orgasm—opens with a semantical goof: “I want you to rape me,” Maeve (Bojana Novakovic) tells her longtime boyfriend Paul (Lawson). But he hears it as, “I want you to rate me” and reassures her that she’s a five-star, 20-out-of-10 knockout. After Maeve clarifies her fantasy, Paul’s shock settles into the impossible paradox of giving her what she wants, which is a consensual version of a nonconsensual act. Tidy ironies like those extend to other characters, too, like Evie (Kate Mulvany) and Dan ( Justified ’s Damon Herriman), whose role-playing is derailed when Dan shows more interest in acting than sex. (As a bad-girl patient to his fake doctor, Evie isn’t pleased when Dan diagnoses her with Hepatitis C.) The film gets into more obscure fetishes with Rowena (Kate Box), who discovers that she gets off on seeing her husband Richard (Patrick Brammall) cry, and goes to terrible lengths to upset him for the consolation sex. And in the most misjudged subplot of the four, middle-aged businessman Phil (Alan Dukes) is aroused by watching his scolding wife Maureen (Lisa McCune) sleep, so he drugs her tea every night and has his way with her. 

Lawson knows he’s playing with fire on that last kink, so he’s careful not to make it look like Phil is violating his wife without her consent, but shots of him applying makeup or snuggling with her are their own brand of creepy. Generally speaking, the more obscure the fetish, the worse the subplot gets, though they all wear out their one-joke welcome before Lawson inevitably turns up the sentiment and makes the film about love and kids and happy unions. For him, kink is just a way to spice up the ol’ rom-com, not a permanent deviation from it. 

The one exception comes in the final third, when Lawson introduces a unrelated fifth pairing in Monica (Erin James), an operator at a phone service for the deaf, and Sam (T.J. Power), a caller who wants her to translate a session on a phone-sex line. It’s by far the sexiest and funniest section of the film, with Monica so abashed by the filthiness of the call that she refuses to translate parts of it, and the two of them eventually treating it as a flirty prank. Lawson spends more uninterrupted time with Monica and Sam than any of the four main couples, and he generates some real sweetness and heat between them while taking a break from his multi-story concept. When he’s obliged to return to them, the film crashes to a halt. Literally. (See the Reveal for more.)

GoWatchIt: Buy. Rent. Stream The Little Death

97 min / Run Time

June 25 2015 / Release Date

Romance ,   Comedy? / genres

Theatrical Release, Video on Demand / Streaming / formats

• Josh Lawson
• Bojana Novakovic
• Damon Herriman
• Kate Mulvany
• Patrick Brammall
• Lisa McCune
• Kim Gyngell
• Magnolia Pictures

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The Reveal furthers the discussion of the film while providing a space for readers who have seen it to discuss plot-sensitive details. In other words: Spoilers ahead.

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The Little Death

• The secret lives of five suburban couples living in Sydney reveal both the fetishes and the repercussions that come with sharing them.
• The Little Death is a truly original comedy about sex, love, relationships and taboo. In a multi story narrative, we peer behind the closed doors of a seemingly normal suburban street. A woman with a dangerous fantasy and her partners struggle to please her. A man who begins an affair with his own wife without her knowing anything about it. A couple struggling to keep things together after a sexual experiment spins out of control. A woman who can only find pleasure in her husband's pain. A call centre operator caught in the middle of a dirty and chaotic phone call. And the distractingly charming new neighbour who connects them all. The little Death explores why do we want what we want? How far will we go to get it? What are the consequences of that fleeting moment of sexual ecstasy? — Anonymous
• The plot should read as follows; The Little Death is a truly original comedy about sex, love, relationships and taboo. In a multi story narrative, we peer behind the closed doors of a seemingly normal suburban street. A woman with a dangerous fantasy and her partner's struggle to please her. A man who begins an affair by drugging his own wife without her knowing anything about it. A couple struggling to keep things together after a sexual experiment spins out of control. A woman who can only find sexual pleasure in her husband's pain. A call centre operator caught in the middle of a dirty and pornographic phone call. And the distractingly charming but dangerous new neighbour who connects them all. The little Death explores sexual fantasies, why we want them, how far we go to fulfill them and the hilarious and sometimes odd consequences to these fleeting moments of sexual ecstasy?

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The little death.

Directed by Josh Lawson

A little weird, a little kinky, and a little twisted.

A comedy film that looks into the loosely connected lives of people with strange sexual fantasies.

Josh Lawson Bojana Novaković Damon Herriman Kate Mulvany Kate Box Patrick Brammall Alan Dukes Lisa McCune Erin James T.J. Power Kim Gyngell Lachy Hulme Paul Gleeson Zoe Carides Tasneem Roc Ben Lawson Matt Reeder Joshua Bury Charlie Fraser Glenn Hazeldine Troy Kinne Matthew Sunderland Stephen James King Genevieve Hegney Sophie Bloom Fiona Press Darren Gallagher Matt James Hiroshi Kasuga Show All… Stephanie May Andy Wood

Director Director

Josh Lawson

Producers Producers

Jamie Hilton Matt Reeder Michael Petroni

Writer Writer

Editor editor.

Christian Gazal

Cinematography Cinematography

Simon Chapman

Production Design Production Design

Xanthe Highfield

Composer Composer

Michael Yezerski

Songs Songs

Gregg Arthur

Costume Design Costume Design

Ingrid Weir

Metrol Technology Head Gear Films Spectrum Films See Pictures

Releases by Date

13 jun 2014, 18 dec 2014, 03 apr 2015, 09 apr 2015, 03 may 2015, 26 jun 2015, 09 jul 2015, 18 jun 2016, 13 mar 2015, 17 jul 2015, releases by country.

• Theatrical MA15+
• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical 12

Netherlands

• Theatrical R

96 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Jessie Muks ★★★★

Loved the whole film, but the video relay scene, cut and packaged as its own entity, would have won Best Short Film at the Oscars.

Review by Jacob ★★½

The lack of thought in presenting rape as a joke (without adequate interrogation) aside, buried within the slick veneer  The Little Death is a truly touching short film about a woman who works at a relay phone service and must translate between a sex-call worker and a young deaf man. Four stars for that really excellent piece - what a fantastic stand alone film.  Fewer for the one that creates a character killed for the "humourous" allusion that he is a pedophile...

It's a pity because The Little Death isn't the typical slice of unexportable Aussie cringe, this script just needed more rigourous wrestling to add some greater depth and mine its real potential.

Review by Jesse Thompson ★½ 1

Surprise! The movie you'd expect from a filmmaker repelling against some imagined larrikinism that allegedly permeates Australian cinema; made for, and starring, a vanilla middle-class for whom this entirely boring movie might be considered risqué. To wit, it's basically tepid sketch television: the movie.

The ~edgiest~ of these sketches revolves around a rape paradox. Instead of the shock value paying off with humour, the climax is essentially a concussion (??) washed down with a subtle suggestion that rather than pursuing sex fantasies, you should settle on a diamond ring.

Elsewhere: a fairly depressing depiction of long-term couples who can't manage to confide their fantasies with one another. Two sketches are more concerned with careers than sex (the insomniac one, by the way, is implausible idiocy through-and-through). One and a half stars to the vignette that sees the film out; veritably the only characters that aren't straight white ciphers and their blonde girlfriends in an IKEA catalogue.

Review by Zach Skov ★★★½

It was interesting seeing all the different relationship dynamics and how nothing ever seems to go as planned but we do our best. Every sub-couple works great as it's own segment but as a whole has trouble blending together. That sign language bit was great, probably the best bit of the film. It felt like it's own short.

Review by Ryan Bingham ★★

Honestly skip this entire thing except for the deaf guy calling the sex line. That was actually really cute, wish it had been the whole thing. Honestly if you haven't seen it take 15 mins and go watch it right now. Only reason this film gets a heart.

Review by jenna✨ ★★★★

I FUCKING LOVE WHEN DIFFERENT STORYLINES CONNECT IN THE END YES

Review by Nolan Cross 🦎 🎞 ★★★★★ 3

Love Actually but for perverts.

Review by Rohit Kumar . ★★★ 5

How is rape a Fantasy?

Review by Ian Sandwell ★★★★

A filthy, original and very wrong delight, The Little Death also crucially has bags of heart. Its climactic sequence, involving Skype sign language phone sex, is one of the funniest - and sweetest - moments of this year.

Review by olivia 🌷 ★½ 3

when will we, as australians, make good cinema

Review by kowalski 🫀 ★★★½

when str8 white ppl say they're "a little bit kinky" the sky is the limit

Review by Danastri Nabilah ★★★★

the phone scene is killing me

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Review: the little death.

Director Josh Lawsom dips his toe into the water, checking its temperature, but he doesn’t dive in.

The Little Death directly wrestles with men’s anxiety over satisfying women sexually. Most conventional relationship films are driven by this torment, but in an abstract, willy-nilly, subterranean fashion that often subtly blames the woman for the problem. Action films, empowering bro movies, slob comedies, rom-coms (even many of those pitched at female audiences)—all of these are traditionally driven by a fear of women, which is the fear of failing to please them. Macho balderdash, or its insidious twin, self-pitying “sensitivity,” are often cries for help, and The Little Death occasionally acknowledges this despair with a tenderness and depth of empathy that stand in stark contrast to the sitcom hijinks that often pave the way for these revelatory moments. The film is perched uneasily on a fence separating a rote comic sketch film from something weirder, stranger, and less engaged with offering reassuring domestic homilies.

Director Josh Lawson follows several couples as they weather the ruts forged from several years’ of togetherness. Most of the characters are attractive and appear to be comfortably moneyed, but they yearn to sate more than conventional sexual appetites. The stories in the film all pivot on a partner revealing a sexual fetish that pulls the other into something of an emotional tailspin. Tellingly, the men are always on the defensive, regardless of who has the fetish. Maeve (Bojana Novakovic) tells Paul (Lawson) she wants to be raped, sending the latter on a farcical quest to convince her when the time comes that the violation is “real.” It’s a nervy premise, particularly as Lawson uses it: as a metaphor for a man’s poignant eagerness to show his partner something new in the bedroom, which culminates in an attempted faux-rape scene that’s played for laughs. But the ending represents a failure of nerve, turning the sketch into a routine comedy of marriage. Another episode almost veers into chilly Roman Polanski territory, featuring a woman (Kate Box) who discovers that she gets off on watching her husband cry, which spurs a variety of surprisingly ghastly manipulations with implications that Lawson wisely allows to hang in the air, with a conclusion that’s reminiscent of an O. Henry story.

The best, most consistent story comes on comparatively casually, allowing the kinks at its center to only gradually come into view. Dan (Damon Herriman) and Evie (Kate Mulvany) try sexual role-play at the behest of their therapist to open up routes of communication between them, and it goes smashingly well—at first. Evie, flush with orgasmic bliss, says that Dan should’ve maybe been an actor. Making the mistake of taking a post-coital sentiment literally, Dan becomes obsessed with the role-plays as performance art, reducing the sex element to a point that Evie becomes irrelevant to the fantasy. This is a striking metaphor for detachment, evoking someone lost in themselves amid their own emotional detritus, and it climaxes with Evie asking her husband where the Dan she once knew went. He replies, in a haunting, self-hating proclamation that could be adapted to describe the hang-ups fueling many male machinations: “Fuck Dan. I can do better than Dan.”

The film’s title is a translation of the French phrase la petite mort , which is a famous idiom for orgasm. Lawson’s anecdotes correspondingly revolve around the intersection between the phrase’s literal and figurative meanings, which highlight the thin line dividing pleasure and pain, life and death, sex and…what? Abstinence? Emotional desolation? A resigned disengagement from a hallmark of connection and life? The film is about the pain of sex as an act so intensely subjective as to be impossible to experience with another person in a manner befitting personal expectation, and how that truth can come to color any preexisting insecurities like a biological mood ring. Men are the film’s focus, because they still bear the social brunt of “hunter/gatherer/provider/supreme fornicator,” no matter what progressive pretenses we currently make to the contrary. Men also enjoy this often unflattering emphasis because Lawson is a man, and one feels as if he might be working through something personal here.

The Little Death isn’t lacking for ambition, then, but it’s stiflingly thematic. These resonances, with some notable exceptions, feel diagrammed rather than dramatized, and there’s a prolonged meet-cute near the end of the film, between a deaf man and an attractive female sign-language interpreter, so lamely contrived that it could’ve been air-lifted out of Love Actually . It’s also unforgivably timid for a film as concerned with sex as this one is to rely on the usual, meaningless cinematic grammar for the act itself: the ellipses that jump from broadly staged foreplay to sweaty cool-down, as well as the traditional punchline of watching a man pitifully, eagerly hump away at a woman while on top of her, his back to the camera. To watch The Little Death is to be reminded once again that sex is still the great uncharted sea for cinema. Lawson dips his toe into the water, checking its temperature, but he doesn’t dive in.

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Martin’s struggle is a familiar one, trying to make high art in a town where “85% of Uber drivers aspire to be famous”. Believing himself to be a hack, with just 11 seasons of a body swap sitcom as his legacy, Martin thinks his feature film will be his salvation. The film’s main financier threatens that by laying down some conditions, chief of which is that Martin’s pale, stale male protagonist must be replaced by a woman (this actually happens in the movie when, in a very funny, Buñuelian flourish, Martin is played for a time, without any comment, by Gaby Hoffmann ). Things seem to be looking up again when, after regularly dreaming about a beautiful woman in his creepy, AI-generated dreams, Martin actually meets her in a bookstore and takes her number.

Where this all goes next is a big surprise, a surprise that would have been even bigger if Bertrand Bonello hadn’t recently done something very similar with his 2023 Venice competitor The Beast . David Lynch’s Lost Highway is an obvious precursor, but Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines is a far better example of the film’s radical bait-and-switch. Suddenly we have a new storyline to follow, introducing a much younger cast, and Little Death switches down a gear from the sensory overload of its opening.

It takes a little while to adapt to this new tempo, which segues from the ‘respectable’ world of prescription drugs to the street market where anything goes. Darren Aronofsky lends his weight to Begert’s film as producer, and it’s not hard to see echoes of his own Requiem for a Dream (2000), which won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar nomination for her role as an elderly housewife speed freak.

Begert’s film is largely its own creature, however, making it a deserved winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT Innovator Award. It will be interesting to see what he does next, since the film’s kinetic first half suggests a restless imagination that’s entirely at odds with the sleek, pragmatic second. That they meet in the middle is a strange kind of alchemy, albeit one that is unlikely to appeal to a mainstream audience. Little Death will surely be as divisive as Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid — and just as perversely refreshing in its very determined oddness.

Title: Little Death Section:  Sundance (Next) Sales Agent: CAA/UTA Director: Jack Begert Screenwriters: Jack Begert, Dani Goffstein  Cast: David Schwimmer, Jena Malone, Gaby Hoffman, Talia Ryder, Sante Bentivoglio Running time:  1 hr 50 min

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‘Little Death’ Review: David Schwimmer & Dominic Fike In A Manic Tale Of Two Movies In One [Sundance]

PARK CITY – To suggest that director Jack Bergert and co-screenwriter Dani Goffstein are playing with fire with the first act of their feature film debuts is an understatement of massive proportions. We haven’t walked out of a movie at a major film festival since before the pandemic, but if we weren’t assigned to review “Little Death ” we might have. And even knowing we were reviewing it; the thought crossed our mind. A number of times. But this 2024 Sundance Film Festival world premiere had a surprise in store (actually, it has too many surprises). It turns out this endeavor is a manic mix of two different movies in one and the second barely redeems it enough to make you stick around for the end credits.

READ MORE: “Thelma” Review: June Squibb is on the hunt for a scammer [Sundance]

We first meet the central figure of the first portion of the film, screenwriter Martin Solomon ( David Schwimmer ), during a dinner with his annoying wife Jessica ( Jena Malone ) and his obnoxious industry colleagues. Bergert and Goffstein waste no time demonstrating their disdain for Hollywood and almost want to beat your head with a hammer over it.  They even convinced Seth Green to play a writer friend of Martin’s railing against the current “woke” nature of the industry. Saying the quiet part out loud, I guess, huh? Groundbreaking.

It turns out Martin has been working on a broad NBC sitcom titled “The Switch” (about a husband and wife who switch bodies) but is this close to having his first film, a dream autobiographical project, fully funded. When the producers tell him the financier wants him to change the main character to a woman he’s flabbergasted. But as they quickly explain, no one wants to see a movie about a white guy anymore. They want to see movies about the underrepresented and disadvantaged. Already stressed over his own existence and on more prescription drugs than you thought possible, this takes Martin to another level and he begins to see himself as a woman (played by Gaby Hoffman ).

Now, if this was the direction the rest of “Little Death” was heading, it would at least be more intriguing than what came before it. Unfortunately, Hoffman’s switch doesn’t last long enough, and the movie reverts to Schwimmer, a mix of over-the-top, stereotypical Hollywood caricatures and AI-generated imagery and animation. Wait, did we forget about that part? A nod toward the end of the movie makes it clear the A.I. stuff is included as a metaphor for how shallow Martin’s world is, but Bergert’s fixation on it is so grating, so overused that it makes following what is happening on screen feel like nails on a chalkboard. Yeah, we get what it represents, but it’s such a glaringly obvious choice.

A reminder, we would have walked out at this point if we could have.  

After Martin randomly meets the mysterious woman who has been haunting his dreams ( Angela Sarafyan , as much a breath of fresh air as Hoffman), he makes the dramatic decision to break up with Jessica (who rightly reads him for filth for it). Back home, he discovers burglars have crashed his place and attempts to hide from them. What happens next would be more shocking if the tone of the movie had been decidedly different up until that point. But, alas, no.

At this point, “Little Death” takes a sharp, sharp turn. No more narration. No more A.I. animation. No more shrill, cliche characters. It’s now effectively, a completely different movie. The focus has shifted to AJ ( Dominic Fike ) and Karla ( Talia Ryder ), two friends who made the mistake of agreeing to drive the getaway car for the two burglars who hit up Martin’s home. As they leave the premises, the criminals end up stealing Karla’s car, and both their phones and wallets. We’re now in the middle of an (almost) 24-hour storyline where the pair are racing to get her car back which contains the marketing materials AJ needs for a pitch breakfast the next morning. AJ is a dreamer and simply can’t let this opportunity pass.

Their night-long adventure finds them interacting with a diverse and (mostly) more grounded set of characters than Martin’s world could ever fathom. Sure, there is a “Pulp Fiction” inspired visit to a drug dealer’s apartment (an entertaining Karl Glusman ), but it’s mostly populated by their fellow twentysomething friends who are just trying to get through this thing we call life. And maybe enjoying a house party and a 4 AM breakfast at Canter’s along the way.

There are few connections to Martin’s storyline outside of the fact they rescued his chihuahua (did we forget to mention that?), but like our initial protagonist, they are also functioning addicts. Not to the pharmaceuticals dominating Martin’s life, but the hard stuff. It’s a plot element almost skirted over until it’s not. Again, the tone has decidedly shifted.

Now anyone who makes it to the end of “Little Death” knows Bergert should count his lucky stars he has Fike and Ryder on hand to make sure the second half works as well as it does. The narrative isn’t that original (whatsoever), but the actor’s charismatic and gutsy performances elevate the material to make the proceedings at least somewhat compelling. But it’s simply too little, too late. There is so much before it in the Martin section that is beyond redundant. So many unnecessary filler and plot devices that simply don’t contribute anything to the overall movie. And certainly not for a shock moment that is nowhere near as clever as Berger and Goffstein think it is.

While introducing the movie before its premiere, Bergert revealed he’d received a lot of notes before locking the picture. We’re pretty sure we’ve never heard a filmmaker volunteer that before. In fact, he said he kept getting more notes before it was finally locked. And then joked he was looking forward to the audience’s suggestions afterward. Well, you’ve got them now. Perhaps another visit to the editing room is in the cards. [C-]

Follow along for all our coverage of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

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The Little Death Review

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Movie Review: The Little Death (2014)

• Greg Eichelberger
• Movie Reviews
• One response
• --> July 8, 2015

The secret sexual lives of several suburban couples living in Sydney, Australia highlight this interesting, though not very compelling script by first-time director Josh Lawson (who appeared in “ Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues ”). Lawson was also the writer and he stars in this production, putting him the same category as Orson Welles, although few will find this effort as memorable as “Citizen Kane” or “The Magnificent Ambersons.”

The title of this endeavor, The Little Death , incidentally is Aussie slang for an orgasm. *sigh* Here, Lawson plays Paul, who finds out his girlfriend, Maeve (Bojana Novakovic, “ Edge of Darkness ”), has a rape fantasy. At first, he’s shocked and then, after discussing it with a friend (Ben Lawson, “ No Strings Attached ”), he finds out that once she reveals it to him, it’s no longer rape. This is not the first time viewers will be confused here.

Next we meet another couple, where husband Phil (Alan Dukes, a bunch of Australian TV shows no one has heard of) can only copulate with his wife, Maureen (Lisa McCune, “Little Fish”), when she is asleep (or unconscious). Nothing creepy at all about this. It does lead, however, to a funny scene with his boss, Kim (Lachy Hulme, who looks like Jake Gyllenhaal after a good beating), who gives Phil some sleeping pills to help him get some rest. Instead, he puts some in his wife’s tea and when she’s blitzed, he tries to fondle her in front of his sons.

The next main twosome is Richard (Patrick Brammall, “Griff the Invisible”) and Rowena (Kate Box, “Random 8”). It seems that Rowena is unable to reach full climax unless her partner is in some kind of pain. This is exhibited hilariously when Richard’s father dies off screen. And you should see this lady AFTER the funeral. Meanwhile, we get another couple, Dan and Evie (Damon Herriman, “ The Water Diviner ” and Kate Mulvany, “ The Great Gatsby ”) who try role-playing with varying degrees of success (cop/suspect and doctor/nurse, etc.), while a creepy old guy, Steve (Kim Gyngell, who looks more like the late Richard Crenna than the late Richard Crenna did) is knocking on their doors bringing gingerbread cookies and introducing himself as a sexual predator.

With so much going on, The Little Death is like “ New Year’s Eve ” (although “New Year’s Eve” didn’t have any laughs and wasn’t nearly as sexualized), but the various storylines can also be distracting and the inclusion of Steve is just unnecessarily silly. I’ll give Lawson credit for his effort though, it’s just that American audiences are not going to care for the sexual fantasies of a group of Australians any more than they would their own kind, especially when there isn’t very much compelling about any of the characters.

Tagged: couple , friends , relationship , secret , sex

I have been a movie fan for most of my life and a film critic since 1986 (my first published review was for "Platoon"). Since that time I have written for several news and entertainment publications in California, Utah and Idaho. Big fan of the Academy Awards - but wish it would go back to the five-minute dinner it was in May, 1929. A former member of the San Diego Film Critics Society and current co-host of "The Movie Guys," each Sunday afternoon on KOGO AM 600 in San Diego with Kevin Finnerty.

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'Movie Review: The Little Death (2014)' has 1 comment

July 8, 2015 @ 6:19 pm Dig in Deep

“Coupling” with Aussie accents.

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Little death review: dominic fike & talia ryder outshine david schwimmer in uneven addiction drama.

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15 Most Expensive Sundance Movies Of All Time

10 lowest-grossing dc movies, ranked from worst to best, borderlands vod release date revealed.

• In Little Death Martin's dissatisfaction with his life drives him over the edge despite his privileged position and access to medication.
• The film's strongest aspects are the performances of Dominic Fike and Talia Ryder, whose characters' stories take precedence over Martin's.
• Little Death explores themes of addiction, midlife crisis, and searching for meaning, but its message and direction feel muddled and unresolved.

Martin Solomon dies a little bit every day. He's a well-paid staff writer on a network sitcom that he feels is beneath him, he hates his fiancée Jessica for seemingly no reason other than she expects him to be an adequate partner, and he has strange dreams that remind him of how little his life has amounted to. Little Death , then, is aptly named — at least for the film's first half — as Martin experiences everyday indignities that slowly drive him over the edge despite his pharmacy's worth of pills hiding behind his bathroom mirror.

David Schwimmer stars as Martin in music video director Jack Begert's feature debut, a bisected comedy-drama about a disparate group of Los Angelenos whose lives (sort of) intersect. Little Death 's satire of Hollywood feels a bit too familiar, its message muddled by murky politics and the word "woke" being thrown around after a producer's notes on Martin's script rub him the wrong way. It doesn't help that Schwimmer gets outshined by Dominic Fike and Talia Ryder, whose characters AJ and Karla only tangentially cross paths with Martin.

Every year, distributors purchase the rights to Sundance movies to secure their wider release. Here are 15 of the most expensive of all time.

Little Death's Intersecting Stories Are Only Loosely Connected

Little Death is a comedy-drama film by director Jack Begert that premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The film follows a middle-aged filmmaker amid a midlife crisis as he crosses paths with a pair of taco truck owners on the hunt for opioids, setting the stage for a surreal adventure.

• Dominic Fike and Talia Ryder are excellent
• Little Death's second half is compelling
• Little Death has a muddled message
• With more time, the film could've explored with more nuance

AJ and Karla's story takes place over one night as they prowl the streets of LA searching for Karla's stolen car and their next fix. Fike and Ryder have a chemistry that lights up the screen and their friendship serves as the backbone of Little Death and its most genuine, if tumultuous, relationship. Ryder, who first broke out with Sundance hit Never Rarely Sometimes Always , is on fire here, funny and heartbreaking in equal measure. Fike also proves his Euphoria season 2 performance wasn't a fluke, playing a complicated addict who is trying to make a better life for himself.

AJ, Karla, and Martin are all trying to make better lives for themselves albeit from very different positions.

AJ, Karla, and Martin are all trying to make better lives for themselves, albeit from very different positions. Martin takes his life for granted and, if you asked him if he was an addict, he would likely deny this even though he screams at a pharmacist to refill his Xanax prescription while complaining about the copious amounts of Oxycodone he has at home. AJ and Karla are a little bit more realistic about their addiction, but no less consumed by it.

Dominic Fike & Talia Ryder Steal The Show But Little Death's Ending Is Just As Confounding As Its Beginning

Once Little Death switches perspectives to focus on AJ and Karla, Martin is all but forgotten, a footnote in their story. It's a testament to their performances that Schwimmer is but a vague afterthought for the last hour of the film. Even though Fike and Ryder are propelled by rocket-powered performances, though, it's hard to shake the feeling that this movie is actively searching for something to say even as it unfolds.

Is Little Death a parable about the ways drugs — legal and illegal — ruin people's lives? Is it about a neurotic man who, when confronted with his own moral failings, goes off the deep end? Or is it about two kids searching for meaning in the twilight years of their youth? Little Death is about all three and, if it had about an hour more on its runtime, it could've addressed each of these questions with nuance. As it stands, Little Death is two vignettes — one more compelling than the other – that only loosely come together.

Little Death premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in the NEXT section.

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‘little death’ review: david schwimmer’s new movie is messed up.

David Schwimmer has never been known for his movies. 

Perusing the “Friends” star’s film resume is quick — and painful. There’s “Six Days Seven Nights,” “The Laundromat” and “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” among other screen non-classics.

But the actor’s undeniable charisma and uniqueness are finally put to proper full-length use in the demented “Little Death,” which has its world premiere Friday night at the Sundance Film Festival. 

LITTLE DEATH

Running time: 110 minutes. Not yet rated.

He’s terrific. The problem is there is not enough of him in it. 

Schwimmer plays Martin Solomon, a whiny but likable misanthrope like Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” or Ignatius J. Reilly from the novel “A Confederacy of Dunces,” who begrudgingly writes on a cheesy NBC sitcom called “The Switch.” 

Martin hates his life and tells us as much over and over. “No hobbies, no children, no purpose,” he bemoans in one of his many “poor me” narrations. The frowning man rails against Hollywood wokeness, downs buckets of depression meds, loathes his fiancée and fantasizes about a beautiful woman who keeps appearing in his dreams.

He imagines his little Chihuahua in a blender. Messed up stuff.

When Martin miraculously finds an investor for his indie movie — a high-on-his-own-supply project about existentialism — he’s crushed when his agents tell him that the one condition for the funding is that the male protagonist must be rewritten as a woman.

“Nobody wants to watch another white guy with problems! Yuck,” one agent says in that cynical, fake-righteous Hollywood way. Hilarious.

Here’s when things get weird.

For the next several scenes of “Little Death,” in reference to the gender change-up, Martin is instead played by actress Gabby Hoffmann. 

By this time, director Jack Begert has conditioned us to expect the visually unexpected. What sets his film apart from other stories of middle-aged Los Angeles cranks is the way reality is blurred by turbulent animations and CGI to express Martin’s roiling brain. 

But Hoffmann stepping into Martin’s shoes is still a shock to the system. Schwimmer does return to “Little Death,” but only for a little bit.

Because after that, the polar-opposite second half of the film is about two twenty-something best friends, played by Dominic Fike and Talia Ryder, who are on a late-night mission through LA to recover their stolen car after a house robbery gone wrong. 

The story of their journey is connected to Martin’s, however loosely, but the shared theme is that of addiction.

All of the off-the-wall visual elements from Part One — at the premiere, Begert called them “bells and whistles” — slip away, and what commences is a more familiar film that audiences have seen many times before. 

How often have we watched young friends go door-to-door at night in search of something while meeting colorful characters along the way? “Booksmart,” “Superbad,” the 2022 Sundance film “Emergency” and plenty of others have done the same thing with sharper focus.

The casting, however, help keep the antics fresh. Ryder and Fike seem innocent at first but reveal an edgy danger as they hurdle forward. Karl Glusman plays against type as a quiet, nerdy drug dealer whose apartment is stark white and totally empty save for a snow globe. And newcomer Sante Bentivoglio is a fantastic find as their hysterical, burnout buddy Greg. 

“Little Death” is an intriguing feature debut from director Begert, who previously plied his trade in music videos for the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Doja Cat and Kendrick Lamar. That same career path worked wonders for David Fincher and Michel Gondry.

He’s a talent to watch, for sure. A lot of directors can make an attractive movie with cardboard acting, or an aesthetically bland one with blistering performances. Begert sacrifices neither looks nor humanity and guides his cast impeccably well for someone so new.  

The trouble here is the fizzling story. The viewer can’t help but feel the loss of Ross.

‘The Other Laurens’ Review: A Belgian Detective Drama That’s a Little Too Shaggy-Dog

Claude Schmitz’s neo-noir has vibes to spare but not much of a compelling plot.

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There’s no one with the first name Lauren in “ The Other Laurens ,” but there are twin brothers: François and Gabriel Laurens (Olivier Rabourdin), one of whom is dead. Claude Schmitz ’s twisty neo-noir — the original French title, “L’Autre Laurens,” is pleasing to the ear in a way its English translation is not — is a thriller of identity, both in terms of how it’s mistaken and how it’s created. For the downtrodden private detective at its center, that entails disentangling his sense of self from that of his not-so-dearly departed twin — a more difficult task than figuring out what became of the deceased.

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But DP Florian Berutti’s photography really is something, giving “The Other Laurens” a distinct ‘70s vibe; awash in saturated colors and the welcoming glow of nighttime neon, these eye-catching visuals heighten the reality to something like a dream state. That’s particularly true whenever there’s a car onscreen: red reflections of headlights bounce around the frame like orbs suggesting an otherworldly presence the film itself can hardly contain.

If everything else in the film — or even anything else — were on the same level, this could have been an exemplar of the genre rather than an eyebrow-raising curio. Maybe the other Laurens would have been more interesting to watch for two hours.

Reviewed online, Aug. 22, 2024. (In Cannes Film Festival, Directors' Fortnight) Running time: 119 MIN.

• Production: Director: Claude Schmitz. Writer: Claude Schmitz, Kostia Testut. Camera: Florian Berutti. Editor: Marine Beaune. Music: Thomas Turine.
• Crew: (Belgium, France) A Yellow Veil Pictures presentation of a Best Friend Forever, Wrong Men and Chevaldeuxtrois production. Producers: Jérémy Forni and Benoit Roland. 
• With: Olivier Rabourdin, Louise Leroy, Kate Moran, Marc Barbé, Tibo Vandenborre, Edwin Gaffney, Patrice Pays. (French, English, Spanish dialogue)

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In lesser hands those touches might be heavy-handed, but thanks to a legendary director at the top of his game, this is easily one of the best action movies of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 24, 2024

The Killer enjoys its Parisian setting immensely, turns loose an eager, charming Nathalie Emmanuel on an assassin character full of creative ways to kill, and upholds Woo’s longstanding adoration for fluttering birds...

Full Review | Aug 23, 2024

The artistic result of this remake is not too stimulating, but not entirely frustrating either. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 23, 2024

I don’t need Girl Power™ from my assassin movies; I want to see women in complex and morally complicated roles.

The remake of his own film, The Killer is the most lackluster entry in John Woo's illustrious career

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Aug 23, 2024

Less romantic or operatic than vintage Woo, and more interested in the goofy-glam aesthetics of Paris demolition. It’s like he’s directing the late-2000s EuropaCorp version of his own material, wresting it back from Luc Besson and the like.

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‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ reviews might prove Michael Keaton’s worrying comment right

After 36 years, Beetlejuice is finally getting a sequel. The original 1988 film is a pop culture staple, meaning Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has big shoes to fill. Michael Keaton’s recent comment was a bit worrying, and early reviews might’ve just proved him right.

Entertainment Weekly’ s video series  Around the Table saw Keaton (Beetlejuice), Jenna Ortega (Astrid Deetz), Willem Dafoe (Wolf Jackson), Monica Bellucci (Delores), and Justin Theroux (Rory) get together to discuss the upcoming film. Here, among his Beetlejuice Beetlejuice co-stars, Keaton expressed some hesitancy about doing the sequel:

The only thing I worried about was, should we have left it alone? You know? Should we have just said that: ‘Don’t touch it. Just walk away. Go make your other movies,’ which we did. So, for me, it was a big roll of the dice.” Michael Keaton (Entertainment Weekly)

Hearing the sequel described as a “roll of the dice” is worrying. After all, countless iconic movies have fallen victim to the sequel curse. The Exorcist’s legacy is unmatched, whereas The Exorcist II’s only legacy is being universally panned. Dumb and Dumber was a comedy hit, while Dumb and Dumber To was comically bad.

At this point, questionable sequels are par for the course. While they don’t usually hurt the original’s renown, they can harm the franchise as a whole. Make enough “bad” sequels, and audiences start throwing around words like “greed” and “cash grab.” Need we delve into the complicated discourse around sequel-heavy franchises like Star Wars and Marvel?

In that respect, Keaton’s “roll of the dice” metaphor is understandable. Bringing back an iconic movie with a universe as beloved as the one created by Tim Burton comes with a significant amount of risk. Expectations are at an all-time high, and with Keaton playing the namesake character, a lot of that pressure falls on him. There’s also Burton’s filmography to consider.

Tim Burton isn’t known for sequels

Hailed by many as one of the best directors out there, Burton didn’t earn his reputation because of sequels. In fact, prior to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice , Burton only directed one sequel: Batman Returns , which had a rather rocky reception upon release. Burton’s trademark gothic rebelliousness isn’t just limited to his films. It extends into his attitude toward sequels and franchises. His characters are deeply personal to him, and he doesn’t easily turn them over to big studios just looking to make a buck. If that were the case, we’d already have those highly demanded Edward Scissorhands and Nightmare Before Christmas followups.

The fact that Burton is even doing another  Beetlejuice  movie proves that  he believes in it. As reported by Deadline , the sequel, like most of his projects, is “very personal” for him. He then went on to add, “Over the past few years, I got disillusioned with the movie business. So I knew if I was going to do something, I wanted to do it from my heart.”

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reviews are a little concerning

For many, 1988’s Beetlejuice is an important film that is equally dark and hopeful. Keaton’s Beetlejuice steals the show, yet the emotional beats are found in the crumbling relationship between an uprooted family and their teenage daughter. Lydia Deetz remains an icon who wants to be misunderstood as much as she craves understanding. And yes, her goth girl realness offers a voice to all the misfits out there who feel like they don’t usually get one.

Those going to see the sequel are undoubtedly looking to recapture those same feelings. They want a nostalgia hit. They want lightening in a bottle. They want to laugh and cry and experience the sequel like it’s the first time. Obviously, that’s no easy feat, and maybe Keaton is right. Maybe they should’ve just left Beetlejuice alone to reign as the spooky little comedy it is. Early reviews suggest there might be some truth there. IGN called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice “charming (if unnecessary),” while Empire dubbed it “fun, if a bit messy.” The Guardian’ s review was particularly brutal, calling the sequel “underpowered and throwaway.”

Like me, you’re probably a little disheartened by these mixed reviews. However, what matters here is expectations. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice won’t be exactly like the original, and that can be okay. Keaton’s “roll of the dice” comment is spot on. When you’re dealing with people’s nostalgia, it can be very hit or miss. So, keep that in mind if you’re planning on checking out Beetlejuice Beetlejuice when it hits theaters on September 6, 2024 .

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Fort Worth Little League team’s miracle run to World Series told in ‘You Gotta Believe’

The film stars dallas native luke wilson and premieres this week..

Breaking Features Reporter

1:23 PM on Aug 28, 2024 CDT

An underdog Little League team pulling off a miraculous run to the World Series. The young players rallying around a teammate’s father who is dying of cancer. The story’s got all the makings of a rousing Hollywood sports film, but it’s true.

The year was 2002 and the Fort Worth Westside Little League All-Stars made history as the first team from the area to reach the championship since 1960. They had dedicated their season to their first baseman Robert Ratliff’s father, Bobby, who attended all their games despite battling cancer.

You Gotta Believe , a movie set to premiere in Fort Worth on Aug. 29 and to hit theaters nationwide Aug. 30, is based on the team’s World Series bid, which ended with a 2-1 semifinal loss in 11 innings to a team from Kentucky.

The film, starring Dallas native Luke Wilson as Bobby Ratliff and Greg Kinnear as the Little Leaguers’ head coach, Jon Kelly, grapples with fatherhood through the lens of sports. But it also poses existential questions around mortality and a life well-spent.

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Robert Ratliff remembers his father as the sort of coach who treated every player equally. “If the kid was good or if the kid was bad, he still gave him a chance,” he said.

After his father’s death in 2003, months after the team’s World Series run, Ratliff continued with baseball for a few years before taking up football.

“Each time I saw a bat or a mitt I’d tear up,” he said. “It was just too hard to play the game because that’s what my dad and I did together.”

To honor their father’s legacy, Ratliff and his brother launched the You Gotta Believe Foundation, which hosts baseball and football camps in Fort Worth and Jackson, Miss., where the brothers attended the University of Mississippi.

Their foundation’s name borrows from advice their father frequently gave them.

“We were raised in a Christian home, and so it started with believing in God,” Ratliff said. “But then you can just apply it to everything in life.”

He continued: “It started with a simple, little message and now it’s going to be a movie.”

Director Ty Roberts learned of the Little Leaguers’ story through longtime collaborator and screenwriter Lane Garrison, who is a North Texas native.

The team’s Cinderella run resonated with Roberts, who traces his affinity for the underdog to his childhood growing up in West Texas.

“I like those small towns that come out of nowhere that are just tough, scrappy Texas boys,” he said.

He also found the Ratliffs’ story powerful from his perspective as a father. He thought about how a grave illness could impact a family and what good parenting would mean in the wake of the diagnosis.

This isn’t the first time Roberts has teamed up with Wilson on a Texas sports film about defying the odds. Their 2021 movie 12 Mighty Orphans tells the story of a 1930s high school football team from a Fort Worth orphanage that reached the state finals.

Much of the filming for that movie took place locally, while production for You Gotta Believe occurred largely in Canada because of budget constraints.

“Every dollar counted,” Roberts said, referring to tax incentives for filming in Toronto and the reduced cost of wages and rentals. Still, some exterior shots were taken in Fort Worth, including at the Stockyards.

As Ratliff’s father, Wilson said he channeled his past experiences with grief into the role. “It was so difficult for me when my dad died and I was in my early 40s,” he said. “These guys were just kids.”

“To have a family, a job, Little League games … it just doesn’t get any better than that.”

Uwa Ede-Osifo , Breaking Features Reporter . Uwa is the breaking features reporter at The Dallas Morning News. She previously reported for NBC News Digital and wrote for Slate. She also has work published in Vulture and Time Out.

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‘The Crow’ Review: Bill Skarsgård Is an Emo Angel of Death in This Pretty Corpse of a Thriller

Ryan lattanzio, deputy editor, film.

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Bill Skarsgård is an inked-up, goth angel of death in Rupert Sanders’ dreary new spin on “The Crow,” here an adaptation of James O’Barr’s supernatural graphic novel series rather than a retread of Alex Proyas’ controversial 1994 cult favorite. (That Proyas’ version remains a film maudit is an understatement, as star Brandon Lee was killed by a prop gun during a production completed in his honor with special effects and a stunt double.)

Setting up Eric as a traumatized Freudian headcase haunted by a hardscrabble childhood somewhere in Michigan, “The Crow” opens gruesomely on a dying horse impaled by barbed wire, a young Eric (Solo Uniacke) unable to save the animal or a deadbeat mother at home. That’s about as deep an exploration into his past as this movie goes, flashing forward to his adulthood, where unspecified demon-driven addiction lands him in a rehab center. Also there is Shelly (the musician and avant-garde artist FKA Twigs), on the run from a vaguely set-up fleet of elite criminals led by Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston, capable of elevating even the most undercooked material with his suave presence). She’s haunted by an iPhone video whose contents implicate her in a murder — and which are revealed in more graphic detail much later, but “The Crow” is almost whiplash-inducing in how quickly it throws us into the action with little information.

They take drugs, fuck, and read tortured poet Rimbaud in the most on-the-nose gothic literary reference in material steeped in them. Elsewhere, Shelly’s friend Zadie (Isabella Wei) is murdered by Vincent, whose telepathic evil power involves whispering something awful into a victim’s ear, tapping into the darkest parts of their soul, and compelling them to kill themselves. An intriguing murderous modus operandi that should be more horrifying than it is as the bodies of hollow characters pile up.

The mystical hokum and dank, soggy Detroit atmosphere of the movie (Steve Annis handles cinematography) combine for an experience that feels just a bit mid-aughts emo, with Baylin and Schneider’s screenplay doing little to yank this story (first published in 1989) into a contemporary context. A gory sequence set to “Ropert le diable” as Eric descends upon an opera house is impressively staged, with realistic bullet wounds that ooze blood and smoke as Skarsgård empties yet another gun into an evil lackey.

Eric’s invincibility and newfound power to escape death — he feels all the pain, though, as bullet wounds knock the wind out of him or a car chase sequence leaves bones sticking out of his body — limit the suspense as Skarsgård tears through set pieces. Why doesn’t anyone think about just decapitating this guy? Could he regenerate his head as easily as his wounds, too? That I’d like to see.

Skarsgård’s performance, more compelling in the actor’s fighterly physical carriage than in the dramas that have shaped him into the sort of person who would wear a black trenchcoat and lather himself in dark eye makeup a la a twinkier Robert Smith, is an intriguing tease of the Count Orlok he’ll be playing in Robert Eggers’ upcoming “Nosferatu.” Here, the actor is often shirtless, gobsmackingly muscled, mulleted, top-to-toe tattooed, and it’s sexy, even if his character is a walking void, a color-killed soul often just deadly onscreen in failing to make us care to be along for the ride. “The Crow” is not a waste of talent or resources; worse, it just hangs there on the screen, as undead as Eric himself.

“The Crow” opens in theaters from Lionsgate on Friday, August 23.

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Blink Twice doesn't quite land the killer blow

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Title: Blink Twice Release date: August 22, 2024 Duration: 1 hour 43 minutes Director: Zoe Kravitz Starring: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Adria Arjona, Alia Shawkat Genre: Thriller, drama Rating: M18 (Violence and coarse language) Score: ✓✓✓

Blink Twice plunges us into the seductive world of tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) through the eyes of Frida (Naomi Ackie), a cocktail waitress swept off her feet by his charm.

Invited to a lavish getaway on King's private island, Frida and her friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) find themselves entangled in a web of luxury and unease. As the idyllic facade crumbles, Frida must confront the sinister truth lurking beneath the surface.

Ackie delivers a compelling performance as Frida, effectively portraying her character's transformation from starstruck infatuation to steely determination. Tatum sheds his usual affability to portray the unsettling charisma of Slater King. Arjona is also a scene-stealer as the enigmatic Sarah.

The cast shares a palpable tension, particularly evident in the interactions between Ackie and Tatum. However, the supporting characters, while well-acted, remain largely underdeveloped.

The film excels in its technical aspects. The cinematography is stunning, capturing the island's beauty and underlying menace. The sound design is equally effective, amplifying the mounting tension.

Alien: Romulus delivers familiar thrills but lacks bite

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While the individual elements are strong, the film occasionally struggles to synthesise its social commentary with its horror elements, resulting in a slightly disjointed experience.

The few visual effects used are seamless and effective, enhancing rather than distracting from the narrative, and the production design is impeccable. The luxurious yet sterile aesthetic of King's island estate perfectly reflects the film's themes.

The soundtrack also expertly blends pulsating electronica with unsettling ambient sounds, heightening the film's atmosphere of unease.

The film draws heavily from familiar tropes within the "wealthy people are messed up" subgenre, echoing elements of Get Out and The Menu. However, the first act, focused on establishing the characters and the alluring yet unsettling atmosphere, feels somewhat rushed.

While the film grapples with timely themes of power imbalances and exploitation, the exploration feels somewhat superficial. Frida's character, initially captivating, lacks depth until the final act, hindering the emotional resonance of her journey.

While the film boasts a certain stylish flair and attempts to tackle thought-provoking themes, it ultimately falls into familiar territory, potentially leaving viewers who are well-versed in the genre underwhelmed.

The film's attempt to address timely issues like power imbalances and exploitation, while commendable, feels somewhat superficial and lacks the nuance required to resonate deeply.

Is it worth a watch?

Blink Twice is a visually impressive and suspenseful thriller that marks a promising directorial debut for Zoë Kravitz.

However, its captivating aesthetic and strong performances can't entirely salvage a narrative that relies heavily on genre tropes and struggles to fully explore its thought-provoking themes.

While fans of thrillers with stylish execution might find it engaging, those seeking originality and depth might leave feeling underwhelmed.

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Nathaniel Fetalvero

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Two Siblings Take an Emotional Road Trip For an Intervention in 'Little Brother' Trailer [Exclusive]

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Next month, Gravitas Ventures is bringing its next acclaimed indie feature to theaters in Sheridan O’Donnell 's directorial debut Little Brother . The distribution outlet acquired the film earlier this month after it turned heads and earned the Audience Award at the 2023 Atlanta Film Festival for its heartfelt story about two siblings on a road trip to an intervention. The Half of It star Daniel Diemer plays the titular younger brother, Jake, who is tasked with driving his troubled older brother Pete ( Philip Ettinger ) from Albuquerque to Seattle for a family intervention following his suicide attempt. Ahead of the release, Collider can exclusively share the official trailer that shows how the two wildly different siblings clash during their trip yet ultimately find common ground.

When the footage first opens, the focus is not on Jake or Pete, but on their concerned father, played by Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons . He calls Jake for an update on how Pete is doing and a brief montage of a drinking binge after leaving the hospital shows that he's not in a good place. Moreover, he's not receptive to his brother's initial pleas to drive with him to visit their parents nor does he tolerate Jake's accusations that his mental health is an excuse for some of his bad behavior. Seattle won't wait though, and they get on the road where the two finally begin to better understand each other . Though Jake doesn't have experience with the kind of depression Pete is going through and their history has left a lot of pain between them, he does his best to connect with his brother, leading to a few happy moments during the trip where they get to have a typical sibling bond. It's a heartwarming show of love and support that demonstrates how much they really care about each other even at their lowest moments.

The dynamic between Diemer and Ettinger will be the focus of Little Brother , but Simmons will also get plenty of chances to shine as their dad if the trailer is any indication. Known for his wide range of roles from various Spider-Man titles to Damien Chezelle 's Whiplash and the animated adaptation of Robert Kirkman 's Invincible , he'll show a more tragic side in the upcoming drama as a father torn apart by his son's behavior. Acting opposite him as the brothers' mother will also be an Emmy nominee in Thirtysomething 's Polly Draper .

'Little Brother' Is a Deeply Personal Story for O'Donnell

In addition to directing, O'Donnell also penned the story for his first movie. Although this will be his feature debut, he has tackled his fair share of short films before, as well as a stint behind the camera for the community theater mockumentary series Thank You, 5 . It's fitting that Little Brother will be his first though, because it's such a very personal story based on his own experiences with a close friend who tragically took their own life. "I wrote the film to capture their warmth and humor and attempt to understand their mental health journey, all of which I hope deeply connects with viewers,” he said in an official statement. “We’re grateful to Gravitas Ventures for championing the film and are thrilled to work with them on bringing ‘Little Brother’ to audiences.”

Little Brother is slated to hit theaters in September. Check out the exclusive trailer in the player above.

• Daniel Diemer