Whip It (2009), the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore, is a grrrl power movie on wheels. Set in the funky DIY world of local roller derby leagues, it stars Elliot Page in their best role since Juno. Bliss Cavendar is neither as smart-ass nor as confident as the sardonic Juno MacGuff. This restless girl in […]
To Rome with Love (2012) takes Woody Allen’s continental road show to Italy for a quartet of stories – really, more like extended skits – with an international cast. Jesse Eisenberg ignores advice from his older self (Alec Baldwin) when his relationship with Greta Gerwig is complicated by the emotionally ping-ponging Ellen Page in the […]
The Academy Award-nominated animated feature My Life as a Zucchini (France, 2016) uses stop-motion animation to tell the bitter-sweet story of an imaginative, vulnerable boy nicknamed Zucchini who is orphaned after the death of his abusive, alcoholic mother and sent to a foster home. But while it is set in France (the view from Zucchini’s […]
Juno (2007), the feel good film of the pregnant teenager comedy genre, was the success story of 2007, a low-budget comedy with an offbeat sensibility that was embraced by a youth audience and propelled into a mainstream hit. Ellen Page is impetuous and funny as the smart-mouthed high-school goofball who finds herself pregnant, the result […]
