Drama

• Title: In a World…
• IMDb: link

Premiering at Sundance earlier this year first-time writer/director Lake Bell‘s In a World… quickly became a critical darling taking home the festival’s award for screenwriting. I’ve been largely unimpressed with Bell and her forgettable career which includes one of the worst comedies I ever had the misfortune to sit through, so I can definitely understand her reasoning for wanting to but together the kind of role no one else was offering her.

As the film of a first time director In a World… shows promise and centering the story around the largely untapped world of voice-over artists gives the otherwise by-the-numbers romantic comedy something of an unique feel. Bell’s time in the industry also allows her to put together a pretty strong indie cast of familiar faces.

But despite the intriguing set-up and good performances, most of the promise of In a World… is unfulfilled. Bell’s creativity in one part of the story is balanced by laziness in another as she fails to do much other than offer up what amounts to a slightly better than average romcom.

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In a World…Read More »

• Title: Austenland
• IMDb: link

Based on the novel of the same name by Shannon Hale, writer and first-time director Jerusha Hess (co-writer of both Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre) delivers a quirky, over-the-top, odd film that is more charming than it has any right to be. Showcasing how one may take fandom too far, Keri Russell stars as Jane Hayes, a middle-aged single woman with a lifelong obsession for the works of Jane Austen and a romantic life that has never lived up to her fantasies. Spending her entire savings, Jane books a vacation at an Austen-themed destination getaway where she might finally live out those fantasies as a woman from Austen’s era.

In the spirit of a Christopher Guest film that simultaneously celebrates and pokes fun at a particular niche, Austenland‘s premise could turned around any number of overzealous fans and the properties they embrace so religiously. However, anyone who has ever known a woman obsessed with Austen’s books may take a somewhat perverse glee in Jane’s realization that her time-period-appropriate assigned role isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

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Austenland may be a fun place to visit, but…Read More »